“Facing up to its past mistakes is expected to saddle Hewlett-Packard Co. with a quarterly loss of nearly $9 billion, the largest setback in the Silicon Valley pioneer’s history,” Michael Liedtke reports for The Associated Press.
“The sobering results, due out after the stock market closes Wednesday, won’t be a surprise. The company, which is based in Palo Alto, Calif., telegraphed the loss earlier this month when it disclosed it will absorb massive charges to account for an ill-advised acquisition and the initial costs of a streamlining program that will jettison 27,000 jobs to help boost HP’s sagging profits,” Liedtke reports. “Most of the damage stems from HP’s $13 billion acquisition of technology consulting service Electronic Data Systems in 2008. The deal hasn’t panned out the way that HP envisioned, forcing the company to write down the value of its Enterprise Services division.”
Liedtke reports, “Investors aren’t likely to dwell on the loss because they are focusing on HP CEO Meg Whitman’s plans to turn around the company. After nearly a year on the job, Whitman still hasn’t been able to convince Wall Street she has come up with the right formula. HP’s stock has fallen by about 14 percent under Whitman’s leadership so far. Meanwhile, the bellwether Dow Jones industrial average that includes HP as a component has climbed by 23 percent during the same period… Like other personal computer makers, HP is having trouble selling more machines as more consumers and businesses embrace tablet computers such as Apple Inc.’s iPad.”
Read more in the full article here.
Meg’s three step plan for turning HP around.
1. Merge the printing and personal computer divisions together.
2. Bring back the TouchPad as the HP Slate running Windows 8.
3. Errr….that’s it. Guess I should be headed to the kitchen soon.
Windows 8 will be the next thing to slow PC sales. Companies will wait to upgrade deferring Windows 7 upgrades because of its higher PX and not wanting to go immediately into a new OS.
MS has made MS Office 2010 so complicated. Have trouble finding the menus. Just got it at the office. want my 2003 back.
MS Office 2011 (Office for Mac) is surprisingly usable but that’s because MS did away with all the complicated menus (the Ribbon) and adopted Apple’s drop down menus instead which follows Apple MMI (man machine interface) guidelines.
Having used MS Office 2010 on my PC (before switching to the Mac), I can attest to the truth of what you say. I asked to be immediately downgraded back down to Office 2003 because it was taking too long to get my work done. It literally took me a half hour hunting for the save icon.
Windows 8 borrows many of the Ribbon paradigms from Office 2010 so you can expect bemused users scrabbling about uselessly trying to get work done while tearing their hair out because of the complexity.
Word 2011 starts up by default using the ribbon. You can turn it off, not that most new users are likely to figure that out, but there’s no “instead” about it.
Get rid of the latest MacDailyNews poll, I can’t stand looking at John Browett’s face any more.
Why? Don’t you visit the monkey enclosure at the zoo any more?
I’d rather stare at Steve Ballmer, as repulsive as he is.
Steve Ballmer is a one nutted charmer.