Mike;

I am “in the middle of HP Corporate Territory”! HP was an interesting company until the present group of management changed the “culture” from “The HP Way” to “Anyway”. I have lots of friends at HP. The garage where it all started was near where I worked. I would go to “The Hill” for professional meetings and met the two men who started it all.

H.P. never made a good line of computers – great printers but the Vectra, etc. was not an industry leader. Compaq has problems and needs HP. There will be many layoffs if the merger goes through and the “new company” will create a new line of computers in the near term. Perhaps they will get it right but I have my doubts.

I think if this merger does not take place Compaq is doomed. HP will get screwed with the merger – Compaq is a dead horse. HP’s CEO needs to get a life and learn how to become a human. Other than that it is a screw job for stockholders. Watch the stock go up in value – for a few days.

Another approach might be this and is one that Ampex used (I worked there for 15 years as an engineer), along with many American companies. You buy your competition and shortly thereafter close down the entire operation you just bought. Fire everyone from the other company and void all warranties and service. By law you have to provide service seven years after you go out of business on electronic manufactured items. No problem – just accept the law suits and forget the customers. Could that be a reason that Ampex went from 20,000+ employees to the present 50? Hmmm.

Tom



>I dunno if anyone else has been following the HP battle, but the vote is tomarrow. Here's the low down:
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>HP wants to merge with Compaq to become a force that can go head to head with IBM, Sun and others. This merger has been ok'd by both the European Union and the FTC. However, the grandson's of Hewlett and Packard have been blasting the company openly to prevent this merger. Its getting to be a pretty grusome battle. The HP board votes on it tomarrow.
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>If you want my opinion, these two bozo's (Hewlett and Packard) represent everything stupid about business. Here are two snotty rich kids (they're not kids any more though, though, one of them did get the prestigous position as an intern at HP, ha) that are possibly single handedly destroying a large compaines chances of being the best they can be without the foggiest clue as to what they're doing.
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>The fact that this "battle" was even fought by Beavis Hewlett and Butthead Packard makes me sick. But then, you probably guessed what I thought :-)
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>What do you think?