hp

Is your tiny desk space making you feel down? Do you have secret desires to dismember that elephantine beast your IT department calls a laser printer? Well, you can stop popping that Valium because HP has launched its smallest laser printer to date, the LaserJet P1005. Crave first learned of this black-and-white model last summer, but it's now available on the market.

Taking up about the same area as a 15.4-inch notebook, the printer claims to be able to push out its first copy in under 8.5 seconds (from the PowerSave mode) with an average speed of … Read more

Note: I wrote this on Thursday before Microsoft's latest bid for Yahoo; it's a follow-up to a post I wrote six months ago. I have two comments on Microsoft's offer: 1) It's aggressive and it's a sweetheart deal for Yahoo's shareholders; I think Yahoo's board will accept it; and 2) nevertheless, the issues I present are the same; it just becomes Microsoft's problem.

It's been seven months or so since Yahoo chief and co-founder Jerry Yang replaced Terry Semel at the helm of the ailing internet giant. At the time, I pondered the obvious question: Can Yang fix Yahoo?

For the record, I thought the board acted rashly in appointing Yang--a relatively inexperienced executive--to perform what would clearly be a challenging turnaround. I didn't think he had the experience to pull it off.

At the time, I thought that Yang--a visionary--wasn't what Yahoo needed. I thought Yahoo's problem was largely failed execution and missed opportunities in search advertising that allowed Google to leapfrog its more mature rival.

At this point, I'm even more convinced that Yang was the wrong choice. But I think the problem is bigger than missed opportunity and failed execution. The company does indeed need a new vision. And it needs a CEO who's capable of articulating and selling that vision down through the ranks and ensuring everybody's goals are aligned.

That's a tall order, but it can be done. Lou Gerstner did it at IBM, and that was no walk in the park. But Jerry Yang is no Lou Gerstner.… Read more

I recently spent some time talking with Christine Martino, Hewlett-Packard's vice president of Linux and open source, about HP's plans to provide services around open-source software. That HP is doing this is now old news (the news broke this week).

But the truly interesting thing in this is HP itself. HP is an appropriate company to take this on, given the extent of its adoption of open source and the sophistication with which it manages that open source internally. Back when I was part of Novell's Open Source Review Board, it was HP that helped to shape the processes that made the Novell OSRB successful.

Christine elaborated:

Free and open-source software is everywhere. It's not just Linux (not that Linux is just one thing, anyway). At HP we've been using free and open-source software throughout our company for years as a consumer and contributor of free and open-source software. … Read more

Sometime around 1990, Data General (who I worked for at the time) came out with a portable terminal called the Walkabout. The idea was that it would let people check their e-mail from the road using the built-in modem and terminal emulator, while being lighter and cheaper than the portable computers of the day. It wasn't as silly an idea as it might seem today--lots of people still used terminals rather than PCs at the time--but, like the DG/One, it was ahead of the hardware curve, and pricey.

Fast forward to 2007. Palm announced the Foleo as a … Read more

HP's products have never been known for their fashion sense, but some extra-curricular coaching from Gwen Stefani may be paying off. Its new Bluetooth Laser Mouse isn't going to set Milan on fire--was this the best they could do for its name?--but remember who we're talking about. It's Hewlett-Packard.

So HP might deserve a little more credit for adding a tiny bit of flair, kind of like the way you compliment an acquaintance for wearing jeans instead of Dockers for the first time. The specs aren't too shabby either, according to Chip Chick, with … Read more

Despite some anticipation of weakening U.S. consumer confidence, PC shipment growth here nearly doubled between the third and fourth quarters of 2007, to reach 8.8 percent, according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker report released Wednesday.

Dell actually expanded its market share in the fourth quarter, after a string of disappointing quarters while it reshuffled its ranks and its product lineup. Dell used momentum derived from its new retail push to drive its shipments up by more than 15 percent in the quarter--growth far ahead of the rest of the U.S. The Texas PC maker finished … Read more

These days, the $500-$550 mark seems an oddly expensive place for a consumer photo printer to live, but for printing your digital SLR shots larger than 8x10 or churning out those digital scrapbook pages, that's how much you've got to pony up for quality output. Not that there's a huge choice. The field consists of the relatively old, dye-ink-based Canon Pixma Pro9000 (admittedly, with some street prices that dip below $400), the not-quite-shipping pigment-based (but recently reviewed) Epson Stylus Photo R1900, and the newly announced, also pigmented, HP Photosmart Pro B8850.

You won't find a … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Every year, I schedule too many meetings at the Consumer Electronics Show and don't get enough time to just roam the show floor in search of gadgets that are either ultra-cool, absurd, or preferably both.

This year, I made a commitment to wander the show floor and absorb as much as possible. It should be said, in three hours on the show floor, I covered a very small portion of the south hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.

So the seventh wonder of the tech world could have been in the north hall, central hall, or the … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Lots of companies here are touting green design and environmental thinking, though in some cases it seemed more sloganeering than anything very deep. Here are just a few samples from the floor at the Consumer Electronics Show:

Among other things, Nokia was showing off their reduced packaging (50 percent smaller; most of their phones now shipping in it; have saved them $150 million to boot)

HP had a large area of their booth dedicated to their environmental efforts, and like Nokia had several people on hand … Read more