8 Jan
1999
8 Jan
'99
8:24 p.m.
On Sat, 9 Jan 1999, D. Peschel wrote:
The disadvantage is that they always want to do things
their way, and they
always assume their way is right.
Oh yeah, like HP is the only one that behaves that way. That's how every
company protects their market (except IBM with the PC, in which they
forgot that one time and lost a monopoly). But I agree, HP seems to go
out of their way to Think Different :-)
So, in your hypothetical universe, I would hope to see
a less-haughty
version of HP. Perhaps that would be an effect of entering the PC market in
1980, being flooded with customers, and realizing that their previous
methods wouldn't work very well. Perhaps it would be a cause -- only a more
flexible HP could enter the computer market, even in your world. Or perhaps
it wouldn't be a problem at all, because (by now) HP would be the standard,
with parts readily available.
As long as we're writing science fiction, here's the timeline for my
parallel universe:
1972: HP introduces the 9830 and markets it as a business machine
as well as a scientific/engineering machine
1974: HP introduces the 65, and offers hefty discounts to students
1975: HP reject's Woz's idea for a personal computer, telling him
instead to use the HP65 form factor with an optional detachable querty
keyboard and TV video interface
1976: HP introduces the Wozple 1
1977: Dennis Ritchie leaves AT&T for HP and ports Unix to the
Wozple
1978: Memory prices drop, Wozple RAM is increased to 1MB
1979: Xerox introduces SmallTalk for the Wozple
...
1995: Wozple 3-D laser memory cube upgrade to 32GB available
1996: Wozple connection machine node count increased to 4 billion
1997: Wozple intercommunication bandwidth exceeds 1 GB/s
1998: Wozple eyephone resolution matches film
1999: Wozple neural implants drop in price to $0.50
2000: An obscure Harvard grad named Gates is suspended from
ebay for selling counterfeit Beanie Babies
Oh well, back to running scandisk on my WinTel box.
-- Doug