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Comment by otterley | Hacker News Reader

I really hope they name the spun-off computer division "Compaq."

Same, but also hoping they'll call the corporate hardware/services company "DEC."

The return of Compaq and DEC? That would be lovely!

Maybe they should have kept some of those brands on, the consumer PC division as Compaq, the 'clever stuff' as DEC with printers and high end hardware in HP.

please no more DECs or COMPAQs. They were both failed businesses that deserve to be dead and buried. Failed businesses run by some pretty poor managers and executives. At least HP is a survivor....remember, they bought COMPAQ, not the other way around.....

HP bought Compaq presumably because they couldn't just beat Compaq in the market.

My father worked for DEC; when it got bought out by Compaq, he worked for Compaq; when that got bought out by HP, he worked for HP (and still does).

He's an enterprise-level field-service tech. He's the go-to guy for most HPs largest clients in Minnesota (UHG, USPS, 3M, UMN all come to mind), and in the Upper-Midwest.

He's always said that DEC did the most incredible stuff out of all the generations of hardware he's seen.

I was really sad to see DEC SRC and WRL go the way of the dodo. Really good stuff. Microsoft picked up a lot of the folks, but, still...

DEC engineering was awesome, but management had issues keeping up with their chip geniuses.

There's a brilliant scene in DEC history where the chip guys had to explain to the board that their latest ceramic thing with legs cost $30 in quantity, and it outperformed the top-line million-dollar ECL-based room-filling VAX product.

But DEC were always B2B and B2A (Business to Academia). They never got B2C at all, which is sad for everyone.

Sounds good. Then Agilent can change its name to HP and all will be right with the universe :)

You mean KeySight?

Hey, not everyone can keep up with the pace of their name changes. It's a moving target.

Kind of hilarious that the core business of OG Hewlett Packard has been spun off twice now.

Only if they start making calculators again!

Only if they start making programmable RPN calculators again.

Or one company's Hewlett, and the other Packard?

Compaq and Packard Bell.

Hewlett-Packard and Packard Bell have never been associated.

Personally, I am hoping for "H" and "P".

They'd save a lot of money on new logos and letterheads by just flipping their existing logo upside down. HP and DY. It'll be fine.

The upside-down hp was the logo of a subsidiary, DYNAC (1956–1958) renamed DYMEC (1958–1959) and finally resorbed as the Dymec Division (1959–1967) of HP.

From HP to H&P.

When I saw the headline, I remembered making this joke ~10 years ago, and then I said, "wait, they're breaking up again?"

I actually liked when they had Compaq as their low-end brand and HP as their high-end. They should bring that back. It works for car companies. Right now HP sabotages their own brand name with their cheap low-end crap, even though they make some good devices.

I want to ser a win/android compete with apple properly - a well-defined and short list of mid-to-high skus and no cheap stuff to apologize for.

> I actually liked when they had Compaq as their low-end brand and HP as their high-end.

Maybe that only applied to consumer hardware? The used the Compaq name for their business hardware, including servers, for a long time IIRC.

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