HP's not cool? (was Re: pdp-11/60 Semi-Rescue)

From: Mark Green <mark_at_cs.ualberta.ca>
Date: Sun Nov 21 12:17:02 1999

> >
> > I think anyone who has been hooked by HP gear would say the same thing.
> > Even before anything with the HP logo on it could grab my undivided
> > attention, I was always amazed at the kind of ingenuity and engineering
> > brilliance that went into the physical design of the systems.
>
> Yep... HP stuff _used_ to be very well engineered, both electronically
> and mechanically. The 9100 is a total work of art, for example :-). I
> love working on such machines.
>
> Just a pity that modern HP stuff is nowhere near as good, and that their
> support at the moment is a total joke.
>

I have to at least partially disagree with you on this. Their
consummer PCs may be of mixed quality, but their workstations are
still the best you can get. We run a mixed shop with Sun, SGI, HP,
IBM workstations and some old DEC alphas. The HPs are by far the
most reliable. We have a high end SGI (a multi-pipe IR) that has
a hardware/software problem in it that remains unfixed even though
the problem was reported over a year ago. This same problem exists
in several other similarly configured machines, so we aren't the
only ones complaining. Last week we got a 3 pipe HP J5000. Worked
right out of the box, completely as advertized. We are one of the
first off-site groups with this configuration and its runs perfectly.
Received on Sun Nov 21 1999 - 12:17:02 GMT