I once ordered a large number of Compaq computers all identical for a credit union in Houston and found an esoteric combination of a specific hard drive firmware with a specific network card firmware that caused the machine to do very strange things when using an expensive piece of software (Hummingbird) to add a protocol to allow Windows 3.1 to be able to communicate with an IBM AS/400 to replace dumb terminals with terminal emulation on Windows. My memory may not be correct about everything I just said, but close enough. The point is that not every identical machine came with an identical hard drive or network card, but all considered comparable enough for Compaq to ship them to fulfill the order.

I was incredibly impressed at the speed that Compaq escalated the issue from a first line support person to having a couple engineers drive out to the credit union to see it with their own eyes to determine a fix (I had no pull or special access, and we're only talking 150 computers). It was convenient that this happened in Houston so the engineers were in close proximity.

This article makes me skeptical that HP would handle it the same way today that Compaq did at the time based on HPE's response to STH. I hate the buying process with both Dell and HP, but they are the brands I buy from when it is a server or workstation, because I love the build quality for both brands on their enterprise servers and high end workstations. I've never owned a consumer device from either brand, but I would not have the same expectations on a consumer device from them.