[conspire] HP Melt Down

[Paul Zander]

Interesting inside history of HP and LaserJet: 

http://www.hpmemory.org/timeline/jim_hall/laserjet_page_00.htm

"Friday, December 7, 1990. Ten years ago today, HP introduced its first laser printer, the HP 2680A Laser Printing System. We had a "pool" in marketing on how many we would sell in that first month; the forecast was 75, actual sales were zero. We also sold zero in January and in February. Finally in March we sold our first unit to a company in Washington D.C. This was the struggling beginning of the laser printer revolution within HP. A sequence of events that have lifted us to a leadership position in the world. The HP 2680A, from this humble beginning, is still part of our product line. It has become a cornerstone of many HP 3000 data centers and the source of many innovative ideas."


In spite of being disappointed by the lack of early market success with the HP 2680A, we (Boise Division) were still convinced that laser printing was the future for high speed, high quality printing.



BTW, I knew Jim Hall before he worked on printers.



--- On Thu, 8/25/11, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
Subject: Re: [conspire] HP Melt Down
To: conspire at linuxmafia.com
Date: Thursday, August 25, 2011, 2:00 PM

Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):

...<snip>

[HP and the consumer-hardware market:]

> What upsets me is that it isn't either/or.  these guys JUST DON'T WANT
> TO COMPETE.

They don't want to compete in the market where you'd like them to.  Some
folks call that 'capitalism', though Views Differ<tm>.