OMG!
HP is going to sell the huge division that includes the group that makes the calculators we obsess over. It's all coming to an end! Our hopes for new calculators that sort of work like the old calculators will be cast into the wilderness of crass corporatism to wander voicelessly for all time!
But wait!
There's a new CEO! Maybe ... but no. Meg hates computers too. OMG OMG.
Calculators are profitable. Although sales volume is tiny compared to to PCs, margins are almost certainly better. Wherever the calculator group ends up, they are likely to survive the transition based on the bottom line. We can worry that the our priorities won't be taken into account as much as in recent years, but this is the age of social networking. User communities like this one are considered in marketing plans now. We may excoriate the new calculator models, or HP's business practices, but more than half of us will give 4 star ratings to machines we like. We'll gush about the old quality, and we'll recommend that our friends and family buy a new machine. If the 15C LE is selling as well as it seems to be, there's a concrete measure of the influence we have. There's no guarantee that possible new owners will treat us as well as our current friends have, (The 15C LE is an astounding gesture towards people like us,) but it's unlikely we will be discounted completely. It's even possible we might get more love directed our way under new owners.
The current turmoil at HP presents us with uncertainty, not armageddon. The worst case scenario is going back to status quo before Sam Kim, with a company that pays no attention to the HP heritage of excellent quality calculators,* only now we have flashable platforms in both landscape and portrait formats. We can produce the machines we dream about now. Talk about empowerment!
But, hold the presses, I've just heard a rumor that Leo Apotheker has been handed the calculator group as part of his golden parachute. OMG OMG!
* edit: This is not meant to disrespect our friends in the calculator division who have always cared about quality. My comment refers to managerial attention to those old values.
Edited: 23 Sept 2011, 1:09 p.m.