General > General Technical Chat
Historical name changes: Atten -> Siglent & Agilent -> Keysight
tooki:
--- Quote from: Circlotron on July 15, 2020, 01:34:08 am ---
--- Quote from: tooki on July 13, 2020, 03:32:22 pm --- leaving only HP PCs and printers under the original company.
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And many of the buyers of those PCs and printers would have no idea of the HP brand name history and legacy. Would have been a WAY smarter move to keep the HP name with test and measurement stuff IMHO. Can you imagine for example, Rolls Royce keeping their name with ship deck machinery and renaming their cars to xcvjnskdnfas? About as dumb as it gets.
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I agree with you 100%.
25 CPS:
--- Quote from: ejeffrey on July 13, 2020, 04:40:37 pm ---I think that is just wishful thinking. Calculators -- especially high end scientific and domain specific calculators like HP made -- just don't have the value proposition that they did in the 80s and 90s. Really the only markets left by even the mid 2000s were education and cheap/disposable 4 function calculators. TI dominated the educational market (at least in the US) well before HP spun off Agilent.
These days, they only really appeal to nostalgia nerds and that isn't really a viable business model. I love the feel of real physical buttons as much as anyone, but it isn't enough to justify keeping such a bulky and limited device around.
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Well, it might be a bit of wishful thinking and I'm not under any illusion that the calculator market's pretty much on its last legs but my line of thinking was this: Given how things went down at the Hewlett-Packard in the years after Agilent was separated off, I think the calculator product line might have fared a bit better at Agilent and subsequently Keysight than it has at HP even though it certainly wouldn't have been a return to the good old days by any stretch.
I'm aware of the Swiss Micros units and if any of my regular use HPs conk, the plan is to replace them with their Swiss Micros counterparts, but I'll cross that bridge if it comes.
srb1954:
IMHO they should have renamed the test equipment division with the full "Hewlett-Packard" name to reflect the legacy of Bill and Dave. It is a terrible shame that the names of the company founders are now three times removed from the great test equipment company they originally created.
They could have then retained the abbreviated HP brand just for the computer products. Most buyers of those products would have no idea, nor cared, who Bill and Dave were.
0culus:
--- Quote from: ejeffrey on July 13, 2020, 04:40:37 pm ---
--- Quote from: 25 CPS on July 13, 2020, 03:37:13 pm ---
--- Quote from: tooki on July 13, 2020, 03:32:22 pm ---HP originally spun off Agilent (to house everything other than computers and printers). Then Agilent spun off Keysight to house electronics test and measurement (leaving Agilent solely for laboratory analytics stuff). And then HP recently spun off its enterprise IT division as HP Enterprise, leaving only HP PCs and printers under the original company.
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There was one other section of business that, in my opinion, regrettably, stayed under the HP side of the split: calculators.
I really think the calculator division would have done better under Agilent and then Keysight than it has under HP.
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I think that is just wishful thinking. Calculators -- especially high end scientific and domain specific calculators like HP made -- just don't have the value proposition that they did in the 80s and 90s. Really the only markets left by even the mid 2000s were education and cheap/disposable 4 function calculators. TI dominated the educational market (at least in the US) well before HP spun off Agilent.
These days, they only really appeal to nostalgia nerds and that isn't really a viable business model. I love the feel of real physical buttons as much as anyone, but it isn't enough to justify keeping such a bulky and limited device around.
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That's not entirely true...the HP-12C financial calculator is still popular among bean counter types which is why it is the only classic HP calculator that is still made. That said, nowadays pocket calculators are largely the realm of the ultra nerdy in science and engineering, much like slide rules. I am happily guilty as charged. I have: HP15C, 2xHP16C, HP45, HP35S (not a bad little machine for a modern one), HP50g (lack of a REAL enter key is a disappointment). I'm not the only one at my work who uses old HP calculators though. :-+
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