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Comment by gw98 | Hacker News Reader

I think a more appropriate biological analogy is HP evolved into Agilent and defecated Compaq and a crap CEO into a new business and this article is standing around the pile clapping its hands.

Source: ex HP/Agilent.

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So as far as I understand it's basically old guard HP (calculators, pa-risc, multimeters, etc.) who formed Aglinet in 1999. Following this, "Consumer PC Clone Manufacturer" HP under very questionable leadership bought Compaq who themselves contained the mummified corpse of DEC somewhere in their folds. That company lumbered along for a bit and then later themselves split into modern HP who still sells PCs of varying quality and HPE who primarily sells servers and associated backend services, possibly leaning more toward the ladder than former nowadays.

This shit feels like napping out the royal family, no wonder it's compared to a petri dish.

The calculator dudes stayed with HP for some reason and were phased out recently, probably due to old age and retirement, in favour of crap produced by the only calculator manufacturer on the planet: Kinpo.

I think the only old school folk left are working in the bowels of Keysight and any semiconductor companies Agilent spawned off.

Swiss Micros make some fancy stuff if you're for the old RPN thingy.

My DM42 even works with original HP printer.

Fun fact: the replacement printing head was available for buy as late as 2020 (Seiko MTP201-G166-E ), I bought used HP 82240B printer which had problems with the printing head and just... managed to buy a new one. From what I remember the head itself was widely used in other gear and that's why production ran so long

I looked at the DM42 but I can't really justify the cost.

I've got an original 15C and a 41C I still use that are going strong. I had a 48GX for a bit as well but someone stole it.

> in favour of crap produced by the only calculator manufacturer on the planet

What about TI?

TI use Kinpo as well. TI, Casio, HP, Sharp are all the same calculators now with different enclosures and minor software differences.

...even TI Nspire?

No they are made by Nam Tai in China with the TI89. The other TI8x series are made by Kinpo.

Yep, as a current Keysight employee, it certainly feels like more of the original HP philosophy and values have stayed with us, while HP themselves have become unrecognizable.

It's named Keysight now lmao. It split again into "the stuff to do electronics with" (Keysight) and "everything else" (Agilent)

Yes aware of that. I sit with a pile of Keysight stuff in front of me all day.

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