HP files lawsuit against Microsoft, and considers abandoning Windows all together !

[Rybold]

Hewlett Packard (HP) has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and is considering abandoning Windows all together. HP would develop their own software for their PCs. I'm sure Steve Jobs just loves seeing Microsoft in the begger's position.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/21/vista-hp-msft-tech-enter-cx_bc_1121vista.html?partner=yahootix

Try the above link first. Only if the link does not work for some reason, then I posted the text of the article below.
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FORBES -
Microsoft: Don't Mess With HP
Brian Caulfield, 11.21.08, 06:00 PM EST
Angry e-mails from HP to Microsoft could explain HP's skunk works project to build its own consumer interface.

Watch your back, Monkey Boy. You may have messed with the wrong bunch of PC builders.

A court filing unsealed Thursday as part of a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) revealed that Hewlett-Packard (nyse: HPQ - news - people ) Chief Executive Mark Hurd e-mailed Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to complain about HP's "call lines being overrun," with customers struggling to upgrade to Vista. "I'm sure you're aware of this," Hurd added. The full text of the e-mail has not yet been released, but Hurd's complaints to Ballmer are the latest signs of escalating tensions between HP and Microsoft caused by the launch of Windows Vista in 2007.

The lawsuit accuses Microsoft of slapping labels on PCs that said the machines were Vista-capable when they didn't have the processing power needed to run some of the operating system's most touted features.

E-mails released Nov. 14 as part of the case show Richard Walker, the head of HP's PC business, hinting at the customer trouble to come in a Feb, 1, 2006, e-mail to Ballmer and other members of Microsoft's management team. "I hope this incident isn't a foretaste of the relationship I will have with Microsoft going forward, but I can tell you that it's left a very bad taste," Walker wrote. "The decision you have made has taken away an investment we made consciously for competitive advantage knowing that some players would choose not to."

That e-mail triggered panic at Microsoft. Jim Allchin, then co-president of Microsoft's platforms and services division, quickly sent a follow-up note to Ballmer. "I am beyond being upset here," he wrote. Ballmer pointed the finger at Will Poole, then corporate vice president for client business, which is responsible for the Windows operating system. "I had nothing to do with this," Ballmer wrote. "Will [Poole] handled everything. ... You better get Will under control." Poole scrambled to repair the damage. "Jim [Allchin] is rightly upset that hp went non-linear after having intel break explicit agreement with me and tell them of the new plan b4 we could explain and mitigate," Poole wrote in a note to Ballmer and other Microsoft executives on Feb. 3, 2006. "I have that under control with hp, for now, but was very painful. Some vp at intel is to blame, we don't know who yet."

Ballmer's e-mail response: "Great by me but Jim [Alchin] is apoplectic. I know nothing of the details, please advise." Allchin retired from Microsoft in January 2007. Poole later moved to Microsoft's Unlimited Potential group, dedicated to closing the "digital divide," before leaving Microsoft earlier this year.

And while practically everyone associated with Vista at Microsoft is now gone, Walker remains at HP. And in in a twist worthy of The Sopranos, Walker has assembled a group dedicated to putting its own stamp on the Vista operating system.

HP's Customer Experience group, led by Susie Wee, has quietly put it ahead of Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ), by some measures, at incorporating new elements such as touch sensitivity into computer interfaces (see "Fixing Vista").

The $1,149 HP TouchSmart tx2 Notebook PC, launched this week, is the latest result of that effort. It puts the touch-screen interface HP developed for its TouchSmart line of PCs onto a notebook computer. Many had expected that Apple would release a notebook with a touch-sensitive screen first. Instead, Apple incorporated the multitouch gestures used on the iPhone into its notebooks' track pads.

The moves hint that HP could bring some of its research muscle to bear on PC software. The company has plenty of operating-system expertise, selling machines running Linux, Windows and a number of its own operating systems, including HP-UX, OpenVMS and NonStop.

If HP wanted to, it could easily slap its whizzy touch-sensitive interface onto Linux or even a proprietary operating system. And with its lion's share of the worldwide PC market, such an offering would be an instant threat to Microsoft. It would also protect HP from having to compete with anyone who managed to cram Vista onto his machine, a thought that we know has occurred to more than a few of the big brains in HP's engineering department.

"It's not very often you get pulled out of a meeting by a group of engineers who feel that they have had the rug pulled out from underneath them so that any competitive advantage we may have had in the marketplace is taken away, enabling any Tom, Dick or Harry with a PC containing a non-compliant processor/chip set to play at the same table," one e-mail from an HP employee read.

So will HP try to take out Windows? HP's Walker has the means, and the Vista debacle gives him a motive. Ballmer better make damn sure that when Microsoft launches Windows 7 he doesn't give him the opportunity.

 

[dukebound85]

i hope so. i really hope linux gets a backing by a big company in a sense

 

[JG271]

Nice. I've always favored HP as a windows-based PC manufacturer - compared to dell and such. I'd be really interested to see what they come up with, the computer industry needs a bit more competition on the OS front.

And I think the poll could do with more options . I think Microsoft's downfall was being too eager to wildly chase large sections of the market that they never could capture or influence too much.

 

[elppa]

Some of this may be bravado. Kind of like a bargaining tool for later dealings with Redmond.

On one hand they (HP) may look at how hard building an OS actually is (at lot of R&D outlay in difficult conditions) and settle for Windows 7, which by all accounts is shaping up like the best version of Windows version since 2000.

On the other hand HP have been experimenting recently with making UIs with their touch smart technology. Also HP already has expertise in building a UNIX like operating system with HP UX.

It would be the biggest threat Apple has had to their business model in years. They've rarely had to compete with a company who craft their own hardware and software and a tightly integrated product which caters for consumer needs.

 

[andreab35]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5G77 Safari/525.20)

Hmmmm... abandoning Windows... seems like a good move their making. lol
Bring in the Linux!

 

[MisterMe]

...

It would be the biggest threat Apple has had to their business model in years. They've rarely had to compete with a company who craft their own hardware and software and a tightly integrated product which caters for consumer needs.

Wrong. The exact opposite is much more likely. For HP to abandon Windows would represent an overnight loss in Microsoft marketshare and leverage over the personal and server computer markets. There are numerous cases of similar falls. The Big 3 automobile manufacturers and the Big 3 broadcast television networks are two obvious examples. The story that follows is the same. With the big players less dominant, the smaller players proliferate and prosper.

HP is either No. 1 or No. 2 among Microsoft OEMs. With it no longer in the Microsoft fold, all other players will be in a much stronger position. Apple is already doing extremely well. It is best situated to take advantage of a smaller, weaker Microsoft.

 

[Queso]

I work a lot with corporate IT departments. There isn't a person amongst them happy with Microsoft right now. Internal applications are being migrated more and more towards open standards, which will allow migrations away from Microsoft solutions. The server rooms will go first. In the meantime they are planning to pursue open source software alternatives to pressure Microsoft into price reductions on Office and Windows desktop licenses.

It's finally happening. Microsoft are definitely now in the wane.

 

[kabunaru]

Do you gentlemen think Apple should licence Mac OS X to HP after they are done with Windows?

 

[QuantumLo0p]

Do you gentlemen think Apple should licence Mac OS X to HP after they are done with Windows?

So far Apple has steadfastly denied any possibility of ever licensing OS-X to other hardware oem's but...

Steve Jobs repeatedly bold face lied every time he stated Apple will never use Intel processors. This was evident when Apple revealed a road map detailing the use of Intel processors. The finale of Steve's elaborate deception came when he stated Apple has been testing every version of OS-X on intel since 10.0.

What I am trying to say is, unless you have lunch the company officers do not trust much of what they tell you. They are officers because they are good at what they do and that includes grand deceptions.

 

[rdowns]

Now that we've all had our little fantasy, let's get real. HP is not going to abandon Windows and produce their own OS. Can you imagine the costs involved with that? Development and testing costs, huge marketing costs, developing software to run on it, retraining. The infrastructure that HP would need is staggering.

The fact is, MS is so entrenched on the desktop and in corporate networks that they would have to do something so egregious as to lose that edge. No matter how much people hate MS, moving away is a huge undertaking that most will never be willing to do.

 

[Queso]

The fact is, MS is so entrenched on the desktop and in corporate networks that they would have to do something so egregious as to lose that edge. No matter how much people hate MS, moving away is a huge undertaking that most will never be willing to do.

The IT departments I'm working with would disagree there. The fact they are even considering it is a major change from five years ago, never mind that they are moving their in-house apps off Microsoft technology dependencies. It takes years to move a major enterprise from one computer platform to another, but all the pre-work for the post Microsoft era is already being put in place. All it will take is for Windows 7 to be as badly received as Vista and major companies are going to start defecting. HP want to be ready for that, hence their very public hedging of bets.

 

[kabunaru]

Now that we've all had our little fantasy, let's get real. HP is not going to abandon Windows and produce their own OS. Can you imagine the costs involved with that? Development and testing costs, huge marketing costs, developing software to run on it, retraining. The infrastructure that HP would need is staggering.

Unless HP becomes an Linux PC company. That saves the trouble of making a new OS.

 

[Rybold]

The IT departments I'm working with would disagree there. The fact they are even considering it is a major change from five years ago, never mind that they are moving their in-house apps off Microsoft technology dependencies. It takes years to move a major enterprise from one computer platform to another, but all the pre-work for the post Microsoft era is already being put in place. All it will take is for Windows 7 to be as badly received as Vista and major companies are going to start defecting. HP want to be ready for that, hence their very public hedging of bets.

I'm wondering why people even switched from XP to Vista in the first place. I'm still running XP on the computer I'm using right now and it works great. Why did companies run out and spend money on Vista, when XP worked just fine?

Do you gentlemen think Apple should licence Mac OS X to HP after they are done with Windows?

It would be a great opportunity for Apple to step into the Big Picture and say to the world "You don't like Vista but you need a standard across the corporate IT world, and we are here and ready to deliver that to you." The could create and begin marketing a whole new division, called "Apple Business Solutions" or something like that.

 

[jaw04005]

By the way, that TouchSmart PC they reference is really neat. I could easily see something like that being your "kitchen" PC of the future. HP did a good job on their proprietary interface too.

 

[rdowns]

I'm wondering why people even switched from XP to Vista in the first place. I'm still running XP on the computer I'm using right now and it works great. Why did companies run out and spend money on Vista, when XP worked just fine?



It would be a great opportunity for Apple to step into the Big Picture and say to the world "You don't like Vista but you need a standard across the corporate IT world, and we are here and ready to deliver that to you." The could create and begin marketing a whole new division, called "Apple Business Solutions" or something like that.

Businesses have not switched to Vista by and large. In fact,many will likely skip it all together.

Apple is in no way ready to try and enter the corporate market. They lack the infrastructure to do so.

 

[mknawabi]

Heh, Apple isn't doing too great compared to past times. "Every empire has to fail", right?

 

[millar876]

I think it may be possible that if HP were serious about ditching m$, they could hammer out a deal with apple to get OSX for their hardware, remember there were some HP branded iPods on the go a few years back. Also, a vendor like HP, could implement the kind of hardware controll apple might request and could implement the same processes/hardware that enables osx to be installed onto macs, allowing osx only on HP machines after the switch.

 

[Digital Skunk]

Do you gentlemen think Apple should licence Mac OS X to HP after they are done with Windows?

No, I think, like many have said, that HP should grab a hold of Linux and give it the backing that it needs to be a real OSX/Windows competitor.

Unless HP becomes an Linux PC company. That saves the trouble of making a new OS.

I agree. HP making it's own OS from scratch or from the small bits of software that they do have would be a catastrophe. HP needs to get a hold of Linux and give it the financial and corporate backing that Apple gives Mac OS X.

The HP workstations are a thing of beauty, and the Blackbird 002 is still the best designed desktop internally and externally and would take the biggest hit since you don't find too many big name games for it, but that could be fixed with time.

Other than that, I could see many software titles moving over to Linux with the backing of HP, as well as a bigger surge in the awareness of the many open source titles.

I don't think Apple lacks the infrastructure to enter the enterprise market, but I do think they lack the desire to make products and offer services that will vary from business to business and depart to department. I also don't think Apple will EVER have on-site service for anything but their servers with the super-duper Apple Care support.

 

[t0mat0]

The whole set of published pdfs of the emails makes interesting reading (seeing Intel's, Microsoft's, Sony's, Dell's, and HP's position in the whole PC labelling suit.

HP took a decent position for the customers - they worked on giving the customer a decent computer that could actually give Aero etc, and be a decent spec.
A lot of the relevant emails and such seem still to be redacted, but the quotes from the OP show part of the initial reaction. Caving to Intel kinda pissed off HP enough I guess. (HP got something back out it, as Microsoft gave them more publicity I think).

 

[elppa]

Heh, Apple isn't doing too great compared to past times. "Every empire has to fail", right?

No, Apple is healthier than they have ever been.

 

[kabunaru]

Heh, Apple isn't doing too great compared to past times. "Every empire has to fail", right?

This is true to the point and someday United States will fall like the Roman Empire as well.
Someday Apple will become the new Microsoft and Linux will become the new Apple.

 

[mysterytramp]

I don't see Microsoft suffering too terribly much. The most likely result is that HP will get the right to sell XP with its desktops, a legal decision that will come right about the time that the current low-end desktops will have the power to run Vista comfortably.

Having said that, Apple has lots of cash in the bank. Overnight it could build the infrastructure to support corporate America.

A deal with HP would ultimately mean Apple has to get out of the hardware business or get out of the OS business. Unless you control both, you can only control one (the IBM lesson).

Speaking of IBM, its OS/2 is still kicking around under another name. I'd bet that's a more likely Windows replacement candidate than OS X

mt

 

[Beric]

I think it may be possible that if HP were serious about ditching m$, they could hammer out a deal with apple to get OSX for their hardware, remember there were some HP branded iPods on the go a few years back. Also, a vendor like HP, could implement the kind of hardware controll apple might request and could implement the same processes/hardware that enables osx to be installed onto macs, allowing osx only on HP machines after the switch.

That would be a dream come true (I like HP hardware). But HP would kill Apple due to its prices actually being competitive.

 

[kabunaru]

That would be a dream come true (I like HP hardware). But HP would kill Apple due to its prices actually being competitive.

What do you think about this?:
Apple= iPods, iPhones and AppleTV company
HP = Macs and Linux PC company
Apple gives it's computer business to HP.

 

[GSMiller]

While I'm all for HP abandoning Windows, I think it's a bit unfair to place all the blame of the "Vista Ready" fiasco on Microsoft. They were HP's computers, they could have said NO to the whole program.