TCPglobal - news, views and issues on total cost of printing

Issue #1005/2 – Following the unrest and strike action by Hewlett-Packard Staff (EDS employees) in the UK and parts of Europe over recent months (see "Hewlett-Packard’s need to return profit is showing cracks"), it is now reported that Hewlett-Packard’s rejection from the public sector bidding list in the UK has been confirmed – despite appealing against the original decision.

Issue #1005/1 – Hewlett-Packard may lead the field with the highest inkjet AiO market share in terms of gross sales but it has been tipped off the top of the pyramid when it comes to in-store visibility and popularity – by Brother – in the UK at least! Check out the details here.

Issue #1004/1 – Guess what? A full eight weeks after placing the order for Dell supplies from the Dell website ("Reasons to buy printers from Dell – are there any?"), the order was finally delivered! This is only eight weeks of printer downtime – what is wrong with that? Can you imaging not being able to print an invoice for your customers for eight weeks? Or print a proposal, quotation, business intelligence report, or any number of other business-critical documents for eight weeks? Having just completed a series of articles on the costs associated with unreliability, let’s consider the potential impact of not being able to print for nearly two months.

Issue #0936/1 – Recent reports in the press and in Hewlett-Packard’s quarterly financial results and end of year round-up indicate that the company is putting its shareholders, and pressure from Wall Street, above the welfare of its staff and customers, to the detriment of its business. Supply of printers has not met demand and EDS staff in the UK are reported to be planning a strike, as has already occurred in Germany.

Issue #0933/2 – Hewlett-Packard is in acquisition mode again, announcing this week that it has reached agreement with 3Com for a purchase to the value of $2.7billion. While Hewlett-Packard’s largest business is now the Personal Systems Group, rather than the Imaging and Systems Group, as it used to be, and 3Com is a network switching, routing and security solutions company, the purchase does potentially have implications to Hewlett-Packard’s printing business.