HP Phone Home
HP Phone Home
As you will see if you read our news, Hewlett Packard, which everyone calls HP, was big this month. The computer giant announced some sweeping changes, including sweeping changes to undo the sweeping changes they announced a few months ago.
Sweeping changes are always part of the scene in an economic downturn, but I can’t help thinking it is better to figure out what you want to do and sweep in one direction, rather than trying to sweep several ways at once.
As a cultural icon, HP predates the personal computer era. When I was a teenager, no one had a smartphone, but all the geeky kids had calculators, and HP calculators were the coolest and geekiest calculators of all. With their elegant design and distinctive reverse polish notation, they washed coolness back onto the owner. At once simple, yet inscrutable to the uninitiated, they were the iPhone of their era. But that was many years ago. HP’s mystique didn’t make the transition into the computer era.
Their printers had a solid reputation for a while, but HP was one of many computer vendors to wake up one day and discover that the PC hardware market just doesn’t lend itself to mystical brand names. In today’s world, people buy PCs the way they buy cans of corn and beans at the grocery – a vague memory of a logo lingers until around dinnertime, but no one has any real expectation that one particular logo leads to a significantly different experience.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.
-
ZorinOS 17.1 Released, Includes Improved Windows App Support
If you need or desire to run Windows applications on Linux, there's one distribution intent on making that easier for you and its new release further improves that feature.
-
Linux Market Share Surpasses 4% for the First Time
Look out Windows and macOS, Linux is on the rise and has even topped ChromeOS to become the fourth most widely used OS around the globe.
-
KDE’s Plasma 6 Officially Available
KDE’s Plasma 6.0 "Megarelease" has happened, and it's brimming with new features, polish, and performance.
-
Latest Version of Tails Unleashed
Tails 6.0 is based on Debian 12 and includes GNOME 43.
-
KDE Announces New Slimbook V with Plenty of Power and KDE’s Plasma 6
If you're a fan of KDE Plasma, you'll be thrilled to hear they've announced a new Slimbook with an AMD CPU and the latest version of KDE Plasma desktop.
-
Monthly Sponsorship Includes Early Access to elementary OS 8
If you want to get a glimpse of what's in the pipeline for elementary OS 8, just set up a monthly sponsorship to help fund its continued existence.
-
DebConf24 to be Held in South Korea
Busan will be the location of the latest DebConf running July 28 through August 4
-
Fedora Unleashes Atomic Desktops
Fedora has combined its solid distribution with rpm-ostree system to make it possible to deliver a new family of Fedora spins, called Fedora Atomic Desktops.
-
Bootloader Vulnerability Affects Nearly All Linux Distributions
The developers of shim have released a version to fix numerous security flaws, including one that could enable remote control execution of malicious code under certain circumstances.