I believe branding plays a role too. I think CPQ has done a pretty good job of creating a relatively strong brand, whether the reputation is deserved or not.
My own experience working in the Pavilion group was that they put out products that detracted from the overall impression of the HP brand. And my recent experience with HP all-in-one devices has done nothing to change that impression. I'm still waiting for them to release fully-functional XP drivers for a printer that was purchased almost six months after XP was released. It honestly never even occured to me that they wouldn't have had those drivers ready to go on day one, just as all the competitors did, or I wouldn't have bought it. Today, the web page still has the same sorry message about how they couldn't have them ready on day one because they needed the "final release" in order to develop them, and that they will be available "soon."
Many of these are CURRENT products, still for sale, and still with the sorry excuse about how the full functionality that is advertised can't be made available on XP.
In retrospect, I'm sorry I didn't just return the thing on day one. Cannon and Lexmark had fully functional all-in-one units that had fully functional drivers the day XP was released. Now I'm stuck with a product that is difficult to use or in some cases can't even really do all the things it's supposed to.
This is not a Microsoft problem. After all, MS got HP a final copy of XP in plenty of time for the Pavilion team to build new systems for it and have them ready to go on the shelves on the day the new OS was released. HP has had plenty of time to put out fully functional drivers and software to support their current products. It's an HP problem. And part of the reason I'm rarely a customer anymore.
I hope that somebody, from one side of this merger or the other, figures out that a brand is worthless if you don't make the effort to maintain it throughout everything you do, including support for changes in the product landscape.
Michael |
