Carly Fiorina was in the news again as a speaker at the Republican national convention. She was also mentioned in a recent article in The Economist which stated in part:

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Given Mr. McCain's weakness in this area [economic policy], his choice of economic advisors matters a lot. ... ... two other advisors, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, are business people rather than economists. (Ms. Fiorina was the boss of Hewlett-Packard,a computer firm. Ms. Whitman used to run eBay, an on-line auctioneer.) Both are able in their field, but neither would give a McCain administration the necessary credibility on Wall Street. ...

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Clearly, the editors of The Economist are not readers of this Forum.

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Nor are they users of HP calculators. Recall these sentences from their March 31, 2005 issue:

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If the board says no to a break-up, what can Mr Hurd do? One option, argues Mark Anderson, the president of Strategic News Service, a technology newsletter, is for him to persuade his new bosses “to decide unanimously that HP's future is in imaging.” That would include not only printing, but everything to do with capturing, transporting, storing and displaying pictures, for consumers and for companies. This has the advantage that it would give HP some focus (get rid of the calculators, say, and reinvest in digital projectors).

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(emphasis mine)

Obviously, this paper is called "The Economist" and not "The Scientist" nor "The Engineer" ... so what do you expect?

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Obviously, this paper is called "The Economist" and not "The Scientist" nor "The Engineer" ... so what do you expect?

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When I read your comment it occurred to me that I had never noticed an advertisement from H-P in The Economist. I looked at three back issues from this past summer and didn't find any H-P ads. I did find ads from Dell, often on the back cover which I think usually carries a high price tag. Wouldn't it make sense for H-P to advertise their financial calculators in The Economist?

The September 1 issue of The New Yorker has a family-oriented ad from H-P with the message "PRINT FROM ANY ROOM, OR AGE, IN THE HOUSE. Live wirelessly. Print wirelessly."

That issue of The New Yorker was accompanied by Fall 2008 issue of Fashion Rocks. I was somewhat surprised to see an HP-Intel ad on the back cover. The ad shows an attractive young woman in a red dress sitting on the S key of an oversized QWERTY keyboard. The message is "FASHION MEETS TECHNOLOGY. STYLE.COM/GO/HP. The Computer is Personal Again."

I'm not sure what all this means, if anything at all, but to me it seems that H-P is pushing their technology into some interesting markets. There may some advantages in those markets. I'll bet the individuals in those markets don't exhibit irrational attachment to old ways of doing things -- the insistence of engineers and scientists on a double width ENTER key comes to mind.

Palmer

Palmer:

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... to me it seems that H-P is pushing their technology into some interesting markets. There may some advantages in those markets. I'll bet the individuals in those markets don't exhibit irrational attachment to old ways of doing things -- the insistence of engineers and scientists on a double width ENTER key comes to mind.

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Best regards,

Walter

Walter:

You wrote:

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:) Perhaps these engineers and scientists just want to be taken as seriously as young ladies in red? (As you know, this is making a very long story very short ;)

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Palmer

Palmer:

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In contrast, I think that there is a nearly unlimited market for the kind of technology being sold in the advertisements in The New Yorker and Fashion Rocks. One proof of the perception of the large market is that those devices are sold by the mass marketing outlets such as Wal-Mart, Staples, Target, Office Depot and so on, on and on.

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BTW & OT: Its the same story with magazines you mentioned ;)