They're jumping ship at HP !

[timmer]

Dont think anyone else has posted this yet but it looks like the leader of HP's notebook/Ipaq team has jumped ship to Dell. Make your own conclusions...

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=17795

[powerbook17]

um its the inquierer, do you really believe that bs?

[Jason Dunn]

"Great Satan of Hardware"

:roll:

[arnage2]

doesnt sound real

[Jereboam]

They do provide a link to the WSJ - anyone have a subscription?

J'bm

[Jonathon Watkins]

um its the inquierer, do you really believe that bs?
I would say that they are usually correct when they do stories like this. I do rate the Inquirer's and the Register's news. It has a certain,....... style you either love or hate, but for rumours, getting head's up and getting nuggets of info they are hard to beat. I've been at a few places when the Inq and Reg have said what was going to occur, days before official internal announcements. I would not write them off so fast......

[drop]

CNET is reporting the same.


HP notebook executive leaving for Dell (http://news.com.com/HP+notebook+executive+said+leaving+for+rival/2100-1003_3-5304470.html)

[felixdd]

Hmm...

Does this mean much for HP and Dell PPCs at all? IMHO probably not....

[bridgecrosser]

I just had a go-around with Dell. My laptop crashed totally last night. I live in Canada and they have no techs here, so I have to repair the hardriver on my laptop myself and they provide the parts while I do the work. Idiotic!

The thing crashed and totally stripped the hardrive of any files. All gone.

I need to find a laptop company that services their laptops under warrenty the old way: pick it up, repair or replace--and ship back!

[timmer]

Well even though some of you doubted me, I now see the article appearing on other sites and it seems to be true.

The guy was also head of Compaq. Maybe he decided to leave after HP decided to go away from the style of the previous IPaqs to the new ugly Jornado like style.

Hopefully we'll see a future Dell handheld with similar form factor to the 4150.

[epdm2be]

To Timmer: what problems do you have with the Jornada style?

In fact the both the previous and the new HP PPC's range don't resemble Jornada's at all. Yes, a few have darker colour casings but so does Toshiba's models. On all other fronts they lack everything a Jornada had.

There's no hardcover, more and more buttons were left of especially the volume/scroll-buttons, no CF (Jornada's ad strictly CF while Ipaq's used SD), powerconsumption is a completely different arangement etc...

I think the Jornada's were pretty good stylewise. They were horrible because of their broken screens (the infamous dustproblem which HP never could solve unlike compaq) but appart from that I think they were very good PPCs back then.

It's clear that the ppl behind the original Jornada's either left or got ditched when HP prefered the Ipac line of pda's. Or at least their input was nullified.

If the new machines did resemble Jornada's (at least) then ppl wouldn't be so negative about HP right now. They'd welcome the come-back of the flip-cover.

EPDM

[Kati Compton]

I need to find a laptop company that services their laptops under warrenty the old way: pick it up, repair or replace--and ship back!
Weird - I thought that's what Dell did.

Anyway - there's also a front-page post about this if you're interested.

[KimVette]

Excellent news as far as I'm concerned... HP has always sold PDA's at too much of a premium for my tastes. They have always had the most expensive PDA's on the market for what you got.

3600 series, no expansion but $500+

No expansion? What the heck are you talking about?

The 3600 (and by extension the 55xx) is my FAVORITE PocketPC exactly BECAUSE of the limitless expansion capability!

Give me an extremely slim PPC, and when I NEED or WANT the expansion, let me slide it into a sleeve or sled, then I can get CF, SDIO, PCMCIA, or even TV tuners or GPS or a Phone!! Why give me a crappy SDIO slot when I will be able to use SDIO devices ONLY with the PPC? (some notebooks have SD slots. I'm aware of this: I sell notebooks. Those slots are not SDIO. Those slots ONLY work with SD memory cards, not SDIO devices).

Why should I tie up the SDIO slot with a GPS card and be limited to only 64MB of storage for maps? Why shouldn't I be able to clip a sleeve or sled onto the unit and add a CF or PCMCIA slot so I can use mass storage AND GPS concurrently?

Question though: is Alex Gruzen from Compaq, or from HP (I'm referring to his pre-merger tenure)? If he's from Compaq, expect Dell's next-generation PocketPC to pick up where Compaq left off: highly-expandable and geared toward power users on the high end, and a TON of functionality for a good price point at the low end. If he's from HP, expect Dell to lose momentum.