Friday, November 12, 2010

Hewlett-Packard

Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), commonly referred to as HP, is an American multinational information technology corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA. The company was founded in a one-car garage in Palo Alto by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, and is now one of the world's largest information technology companies, operating in nearly every country (Dell XPS M1210 Battery) .

HP specializes in developing and manufacturing computing, data storage, and networking hardware, designing software and delivering services. Major product lines include personal computing devices, enterprise servers, related storage devices, as well as a diverse range of printers and other imaging products. HP markets its products to households, small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprises directly as well as via online distribution, consumer-electronics and office-supply retailers, software partners and major technology vendors (Dell Studio XPS 1340 Battery) .

HP's posted net revenue in 2009 was $115 billion, with approximately $40 billion coming from services. In 2006, the intense competition between HP and IBM tipped in HP's favor, with HP posting revenue of US$91.7 billion, compared to $91.4 billion for IBM; the gap between the companies widened to $21 billion in 2009. In 2007, HP's revenue was $104 billion, making HP the first IT company in history to report revenues exceeding $100 billion (Dell Studio XPS 1640 Battery) .

In 2008 HP retained its global leadership position in inkjet, laser, large format and multi-function printers market, and its leadership position in the hardware industry.Also HP became #2 globally in IT services as reported by IDC & Gartner.

Major company changes include a spin-off of part of its business as Agilent Technologies in 1999, its merger with Compaq in 2002, and the acquisition ofEDS in 2008, which led to combined revenues of $118.4 billion in 2008 and a Fortune 500 ranking of 9 in 2009 (Dell Vostro 1710 Battery) .

In November 2009, HP announced the acquisition of 3Com; with the deal closing on April 12, 2010. On April 28, 2010, HP announced the buyout of Palm for $1.2 billion. On July 1, 2010, the acquisition of Palm was final. On September 2, 2010 won its bidding war for 3PAR with a $33 a share offer ($2.07 billion) which Delldeclined to match (Sony VGP-BPS13 battery) .

On August 6, 2010 CEO Mark Hurd resigned.[13] Cathie Lesjak assumed the role interim CEO, and on September 30, 2010, Léo Apotheker became HP's new permanent CEO and Ray Lane, Managing Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, was elected to the position of non-executive Chairman. Both appointments are effective November 1, 2010 (Sony VGP-BPL9 battery) .

Company history

Further information: List of Hewlett-Packard executive leadership

Founding

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard graduated in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1935. The company originated in a garage in nearby Palo Altoduring a fellowship they had with a past professor, Frederick Terman at Stanford during the Great Depression. Terman was considered a mentor to them in forming Hewlett-Packard (Sony VGP-BPL11 battery) .

In 1939, Packard and Hewlett established Hewlett-Packard (HP) in Packard's garage with an initial capital investment of US$538. Hewlett and Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett Packard won the coin toss but named their electronics manufacturing enterprise the "Hewlett-Packard Company" (Sony VGP-BPL15 battery) .

HP incorporated on August 18, 1947, and went public on November 6, 1957.

Of the many projects they worked on, their very first financially successful product was a precision audio oscillator, the Model HP200A. Their innovation was the use of a small light bulb as a temperature dependent resistor in a critical portion of the circuit (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery) .

This allowed them to sell the Model 200A for $54.40 when competitors were selling less stable oscillators for over $200. The Model 200 series of generators continued until at least 1972 as the 200AB, still tube-based but improved in design through the years. At 33 years, it was perhaps the longest-selling basic electronic design of all time (Dell Latitude E6400 battery) .

One of the company's earliest customers was The Walt Disney Company, which bought eight Model 200B oscillators (at $71.50 each) for use in certifying the Fantasound surround sound systems installed in theaters for the movie Fantasia.

Early years

The company was originally rather unfocused, working on a wide range of electronic products for industry and even agriculture. Eventually they elected to focus on high-quality electronic test and measurement equipment (HP Pavilion dv6000 Battery) .

From the 1940s until well into the 1990s the company concentrated on making electronic test equipment: signal generators, voltmeters, oscilloscopes,frequency counters, thermometers, time standards, wave analyzers, and many other instruments. A distinguishing feature was pushing the limits of measurement range and accuracy; many HP instruments were more sensitive, accurate, and precise than other comparable equipment (Sony VGN-FZ31S battery) .

Following the pattern set by the company's first product, the 200A, test instruments were labelled with three to five digits followed by the letter "A". Improved versions went to suffixes "B" through "E". As the product range grew wider HP started using product designators starting with a letter for accessories, supplies, software, and components (Sony VGN-FZ31S battery) .

The 1960s

HP is recognized as the symbolic founder of Silicon Valley, although it did not actively investigate semiconductor devices until a few years after the "Traitorous Eight" had abandoned William Shockleyto create Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957. Hewlett-Packard's HP Associates division, established around 1960, developed semiconductor devices primarily for internal use. Instruments and calculators were some of the products using these devices (Hp pavilion dv6000 battery) .

HP partnered in the 1960s with Sony and the Yokogawa Electric companies in Japan to develop several high-quality products. The products were not a huge success, as there were high costs in building HP-looking products in Japan. HP and Yokogawa formed a joint venture (Yokogawa-Hewlett-Packard) in 1963 to market HP products in Japan. HP bought Yokogawa Electric's share of Hewlett-Packard Japan in 1999 (SONY VGN-FZ38M Battery) .

HP spun off a small company, Dynac, to specialize in digital equipment. The name was picked so that the HP logo "hp" could be turned upside down to be an reverse reflect image of the logo "dy" of the new company. Eventually Dynac changed to Dymec, then was folded back into HP in 1959. HP experimented with using Digital Equipment Corporation minicomputers with its instruments (SONY VGN-FZ31z Battery) .

But after deciding that it would be easier to build another small design team than deal with DEC, HP entered the computer market in 1966 with the HP 2100 / HP 1000 series of minicomputers. These had a simple accumulator-based design, with registers arranged somewhat similarly to the Intel x86 architecture still used today. The series was produced for 20 years, in spite of several attempts to replace it, and was a forerunner of the HP 9800 and HP 250 series of desktop and business computers (SONY VGN-FZ31E Battery) .

The 1970s

The HP 3000 was an advanced stack-based design for a business computing server, later redesigned with RISC technology, that has only recently been retired from the market. The HP 2640 series of smart and intelligent terminals introduced forms-based interfaces to ASCII terminals, and also introduced screen labeled function keys, now commonly used on gas pumps and bank ATMs (SONY VGN-FZ31J Battery) .

The HP 2640 series included one of the first bit mapped graphics displays that when combined with the HP 2100 21MX F-Series microcoded Vector Instruction Set enabled the first commercial WYSIWYGPresentation Program, BRUNO that later became the program HP-Draw on the HP 3000. Although scoffed at in the formative days of computing, HP would eventually surpass even IBM as the world's largest technology vendor, in terms of sales (SONY VGN-FZ31M Battery) .

"The new Hewlett-Packard 9100A personal computer is ready, willing, and able ... to relieve you of waiting to get on the big computer."

HP is identified by Wired magazine as the producer of the world's first marketed, mass-produced personal computer, the Hewlett-Packard 9100A, introduced in 1968.HP called it a desktop calculator because, as Bill Hewlett said, "If we had called it a computer, it would have been rejected by our customers' computer gurus because it didn't look like an IBM (SONY VGN-FZ31B Battery) .

We therefore decided to call it a calculator, and all such nonsense disappeared." An engineering triumph at the time, the logic circuit was produced without any integrated circuits; the assembly of the CPU having been entirely executed in discrete components. WithCRT display, magnetic-card storage, and printer, the price was around $5000. The machine's keyboard was a cross between that of a scientific calculator and an adding machine. There was no alphabetic keyboard (SONY VGP-BPS13 Battery) .

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, originally designed the Apple I computer while working at HP and offered it to them under their right of first refusal to his work, but they did not take it up as the company wanted to stay in scientific, business, and industrial markets.

The company earned global respect for a variety of products (Dell Inspiron 1320 Battery) .

They introduced the world's first handheld scientific electronic calculator in 1972 (the HP-35), the first handheld programmable in 1974 (the HP-65), the first alphanumeric, programmable, expandable in 1979 (the HP-41C), and the first symbolic and graphing calculator, the HP-28C. Like their scientific and business calculators, their oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and other measurement instruments have a reputation for sturdiness and usability (the latter products are now part of spin-off Agilent's product line) (Dell Inspiron 1320n Battery) .

The company's design philosophy in this period was summarized as "design for the guy at the next bench".

The 98x5 series of technical desktop computers started in 1975 with the 9815, and the cheaper 80 series, again of technical computers, started in 1979 with the 85.These machines used a version of the BASIC programming language which was available immediately after they were switched on, and used a proprietary magnetic tape for storage (Dell Inspiron 1464 Battery) .

HP computers were similar in capabilities to the much later IBM Personal Computer, although the limitations of available technology forced prices to be high.

The 1980s

The garage in Palo Alto where Hewlett and Packard began their company

In 1984, HP introduced both inkjet and laser printers for the desktop (Dell Inspiron 1564 Battery) .

Along with its scanner product line, these have later been developed into successfulmultifunction products, the most significant being single-unit printer/scanner/copier/fax machines. The print mechanisms in HP's tremendously popular LaserJet line of laser printers depend almost entirely on Canon's components (print engines), which in turn use technology developed by Xerox. HP develops the hardware, firmware, and software that convert data into dots for the mechanism to print (Dell Inspiron 1764 Battery) .

On March 3, 1986, HP registered the HP.com domain name, making it the ninth Internet .com domain ever to be registered.

In 1987, the Palo Alto garage where Hewlett and Packard started their business was designated as a California State historical landmark (Dell Studio 1450 Battery) .

The 1990s

Hewlett-Packard logo used until 2008

In the 1990s, HP expanded their computer product line, which initially had been targeted at university, research, and business users, to reach consumers.

HP also grew through acquisitions, buying Apollo Computer in 1989 and Convex Computer in 1995.

Later in the decade, HP opened hpshopping.com as an independent subsidiary to sell online, direct to consumers; in 2005, the store was renamed "HP Home & Home Office Store (Dell Studio 1457 Battery) ."

From 1995 to 1998, Hewlett-Packard were sponsors of the English football team Tottenham Hotspur.

In 1999, all of the businesses not related to computers, storage, and imaging were spun off from HP to form Agilent. Agilent's spin-off was the largest initial public offeringin the history of Silicon Valley. The spin-off created an $8 billion company with about 30,000 employees, manufacturing scientific instruments, semiconductors, optical networking devices, and electronic test equipment for telecom and wireless R&D and production (Dell Latitude D610 Battery) .

In July 1999, HP appointed Carly Fiorina as CEO, the first female CEO of a company in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Fiorina served as CEO during the tech downturn of the early 2000s. During her tenure, the market value of HP halved and the company incurred heavy job losses. The HP Board of Directors asked Fiorina to step down in 2005, and she resigned on February 9, 2005 (Toshiba NB100 Battery) .

The 2000s

HP's recent campaign, The Computer is Personal Again, features several celebrity endorsements, including a TV commercial with Gwen Stefani.

On September 3, 2001, HP announced that an agreement had been reached with Compaq to merge the two companies. In May, 2002, after passing a shareholder vote, HP officially merged with Compaq (Toshiba Satellite M65 battery) .

Prior to this, plans had been in place to consolidate the companies' product teams and product lines.

The merger occurred after a proxy fight with Bill Hewlett's son Walter, who objected to the merger. Compaq itself had bought Tandem Computers in 1997 (which had been started by ex-HP employees), and Digital Equipment Corporation in 1998. Following this strategy, HP became a major player in desktops, laptops, and servers for many different markets (Toshiba Satellite M60 battery) .

After the merger with Compaq, the new ticker symbol became "HPQ", a combination of the two previous symbols, "HWP" and "CPQ", to show the significance of the alliance and also key letters from the two companies Hewlett-Packard and Compaq (the latter company being famous for its "Q" logo on all of its products (Dell Latitude D830 Battery) .

In the year 2004 HP released the DV 1000 Series, including the HP Pavilion dv 1658 and 1040 two years later in May 2006, HP began its campaign, The Computer is Personal Again. The campaign was designed to bring back the fact that the PC is a personal product. The campaign utilized viral marketing, sophisticated visuals, and its own web site (www.hp.com/personal) (Dell Studio 1735 Battery) .

Some of the ads featured well-known personalities, including Pharrell, Petra Nemcova, Mark Burnett, Mark Cuban, Jay-Z, Gwen Stefani, and Shaun White.

On May 13, 2008, HP and Electronic Data Systems announced that they had signed a definitive agreement under which HP would purchase EDS (Dell Latitude D620 Battery) .

On June 30, HP announced that the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 had expired. "The transaction still requires EDS stockholder approval and regulatory clearance from the European Commission and other non-U.S. jurisdictions and is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of the other closing conditions specified in the merger agreement (Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Battery) .

" The agreement was finalized on August 26, 2008, and it was publicly announced that EDS would be re-branded "EDS an HP company." As of September 23, 2009, EDS is known as HP Enterprise Services.

On November 11, 2009, 3Com and Hewlett-Packard announced that Hewlett-Packard would be acquiring 3Com for $2.7 billion in cash (Sony VGN-FW11S Battery) .

The acquisition is one of the biggest in size among a series of takeovers and acquisitions by technology giants to push their way to become one-stop shops. Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007, tech giants have constantly felt the pressure to expand beyond their current market niches. Dell purchased Perot Systems recently to invade into the technology consulting business area previously dominated by IBM (Sony VGN-FW11M Battery) .

Hewlett-Packard's latest move marked its incursion into enterprise networking gear market dominated by Cisco.

The 2010s

On April 28, 2010, Palm, Inc. and Hewlett-Packard announced that HP would be acquiring Palm for 1.2 billion in cash and debt,the deal officially closed on July 1, 2010. In the months leading up to the buyout it was rumored that Palm was going to be purchased by either HTC, Dell, RIM or HP (Dell Studio 1555 battery) .

The addition of Palm handsets to the HP product line provides some overlap with the current iPAQmobile products but will significantly increase their mobile presence as those devices have not been selling well. The addition of Palm brings HP a library of valuable patents as well the mobile operating platform known as webOS. On July 1, 2010, the acquisition of Palm was final. On September 2, 2010 won its bidding war for 3PAR with a $33 a share offer ($2.07 billion) which Dell declined to match (Dell Latitude E5400 Battery) .

On August 6, 2010 CEO Mark Hurd resigned amid controversy and CFO Cathie Lesjak assumed the role of interim CEO. On September 30, 2010, Léo Apotheker was named as HP's new CEO and President.

Apotheker’s appointment sparked a strong reaction from Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison, who complained that Apotheker had been in charge of SAP when one of its subsidiaries was systematically stealing software from Oracle (Dell Latitude E4200 Battery) .

SAP accepted that its subsidiary, which has now closed, illegally accessed Oracle intellectual property.

Facilities

The main entrance to Hewlett-Packard corporate headquarters in Palo Alto, California

HP's global operations are directed from its headquarters in Palo Alto, California, USA. Its U.S. operations are directed from its facility in Houston, Texas, USA, the site originally belonging to Compaq, which it acquired (Dell Vostro A840 Battery) .

Latin America operations are directed from Miami, Florida, USA, European operations fromGeneva, Switzerland, and Asia-Pacific operations from Singapore. It also has large operations in Boise, Idaho, Roseville, California, San Diego, California, and Plano, Texas (the former headquarters of EDS, which HP acquired) (Dell Inspiron 300M Battery) .

In the UK, HP is based out of a large site in Bracknell, Berkshire with offices in various UK locations, including a landmark office tower in London, 88 Wood Street. Its recent acquisition of 3Com will expand its employee base toMarlborough, Massachusetts.

Products and organizational structure

HP has successful lines of printers, scanners, digital cameras, calculators, PDAs, servers, workstation computers, and computers for home and small business use computers; many of the computers came from the 2002 merger with Compaq (Dell Studio 1737 battery) .

HP today promotes itself as supplying not just hardware and software, but also a full range of services to design, implement, and support IT infrastructure.

HP's Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) is "the leading imaging and printing systems provider in the world for printer hardware, printing supplies and scanning devices, providing solutions across customer segments from individual consumers to small and medium businesses to large enterprises (Dell Inspiron E1505 battery) ."

Products and technology associated with IPG include Inkjetand LaserJet printers, consumables and related products, Officejet all-in-one multifunction printer/scanner/faxes, Large Format Printers, Indigo Digital Press, HP Web Jetadmin printer management software, HP Output Management suite of software, LightScribe optical recording technology, HP Photosmart digital cameras and photo printers, HP SPaM, and Snapfish by HP, a photo sharing and photo products service. On December 23, 2008, HP released iPrint Photo for iPhone a free downloadable software application that allows the printing of 4" x 6" photos (Dell Latitude E6400 battery) .

HP's Personal Systems Group (PSG) claims to be "one of the leading vendors of personal computers ("PCs") in the world based on unit volume shipped and annual revenue."PSG includes business PCs and accessories, consumer PCs and accessories, (e.g., HP Pavilion, Compaq Presario, VoodooPC), handheld computing (e.g., iPAQ Pocket PC), and digital "connected" entertainment (e.g., HP MediaSmart TVs, HP MediaSmart Servers, HP MediaVaults, DVD+RW drives) (Dell RM791 battery) .

HP resold the Apple iPod until November 2005.

HP Enterprise Business (EB) incorporates Technical services, Enterprise Services (formerly known as EDS), HP Software & Solutions, and Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking Group (ESSN). The Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking Group (ESSN) oversees "back end" products like storage and servers (Dell XPS M1530 battery) .

HP's networking business unit ProCurve is responsible for the family of network switches, wireless access points, and routers. They are currently a business unit of ESSN.

HP Software & Solutions is the company's enterprise software division. For years, HP has produced and marketed its brand of enterprise management software, HP OpenView (Dell XPS M2010 battery) .

HP has purchased a total of 12 software companies as part of a publicized, deliberate strategy to augment its software offerings for large business customers. The division markets its software in four categories: HP IT Management Software (also known as business technology optimization software), HP Information Management Software, business intelligence solutions, and communications and media software and solutions (Dell Vostro 1000 battery) .

HP's Office of Strategy and Technology has four main functions: (1) steering the company's $3.6 billion research and development investment, (2) fostering the development of the company's global technical community, (3) leading the company's strategy and corporate development efforts, and (4) performing worldwide corporate marketing activities. Under this office is HP Labs, the research arm of HP (Acer Aspire One battery) .

Founded in 1966, HP Labs's function is to deliver new technologies and to create business opportunities that go beyond HP's current strategies. An example of recent HP Lab technology includes the Memory spot chip. HP IdeaLab further provides a web forum on early-state innovations to encourage open feedback from consumers and the development community (Sony VGP-BPS13A/B Battery) .

HP also offers managed services where they provide complete IT-support solutions for other companies and organisations. Some examples of these are: A large activity is HP offering "Professional Support" and desktop "Premier Support" for Microsoft in the EMEA marketplace. This is done from the Clonskeaghoffice in Dublin, Sofia and Israel. Support is offered on the line of Microsoft operation systems, Exchange, Sharepoint and some office-applications (Dell Precision M70 Battery) .

But HP also offers outsourced services for companies like Bank of Ireland, some UK banks, the U.S. defense forces, etc.

Snapfish

HP owns and operates the photo sharingsite Snapfish.

Snapfish was launched in April 2000 by entrepreneurs Rajil Kapoor, Suneet Wadhwa, Shripati Acharya, and Bala Parthasarathy and is based in San Francisco, California. In 2004, Snapfish opened a physical retail store in Alexandria, Virginia, but since they were purchased by HP in 2005, they currently do not maintain any retail stores (Toshiba Satellite L305 Battery) .

Snapfish offers free membership with unlimited photo storage. Members can use their uploaded photos to share and to create photo products. Snapfish allows members to download low resolution copies of the images they uploaded for free. However, if members want to download high resolution, as opposed to the low resulotion copies, or even original copies of their own uploaded images, Snapfish charges a per-image fee for each download (Toshiba Satellite T4900 Battery) .

Culture

The founders, known to friends and employees alike as Bill and Dave, developed a unique management style that has come to be known as The HP Way. In Bill's words, the HP Way is "a core ideology ... which includes a deep respect for the individual, a dedication to affordable quality and reliability, a commitment to community responsibility, and a view that the company exists to make technical contributions for the advancement and welfare of humanity (Toshiba PA3399U-2BRS battery) ."

The following are the tenets of The HP Way:

  1. We have trust and respect for individuals.
  2. We focus on a high level of achievement and contribution.
  3. We conduct our business with uncompromising integrity.
  4. We achieve our common objectives through teamwork.
  5. We encourage flexibility and innovation (Toshiba Satellite A200 Battery) .

Corporate social responsibility

In July 2007, the company announced that it had met its target, set in 2004, to recycle one billion pounds of electronics, toner and ink cartridges. It has set a new goal of recycling a further two billion pounds of hardware by the end of 2010. In 2006, the company recovered 187 million pounds of electronics, 73 percent more than its closest competitor.

In 2008, HP released its supply chain emissions data – an industry first (Toshiba Satellite 1200 Battery) .

In September 2009, Newsweek ranked HP #1 on its 2009 Green Rankings of America's 500 largest corporations. According to environmentalleader.com, "Hewlett-Packard earned its number one position due to its greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction programs, and was the first major IT company to report GHG emissions associated with its supply chain, according to the ranking (Toshiba Satellite M300 Battery) .

In addition, HP has made an effort to remove toxic substances from its products, though Greenpeace has targeted the company for not doing better."

HP took the top spot on Corporate Responsibility Magazine's 100 Best Corporate Citizens List for 2010. The list is cited by PR Weekas one of America's most important business rankings (Dell Latitude XT2 Tablet PC Battery) .

HP beat out other Russell 1000 Index companies because of its leadership in seven categories including environment, climate changes and corporate philanthropy. In 2009, HP was ranked fifth.

Fortune magazine named HP one of the World’s Most Admired Companies in 2010, placing it No. 2 in the computer industry and No. 32 overall in its list of the top 50 (Toshiba Portege 335CT Battery) .

This year in the computer industry HP was ranked No. 1 in social responsibility, long-term investment, global competitiveness, and use of corporate assets.

In April 2010, HP released its latest Global Responsibility report covering accomplishments during 2009. The report claims that in 2009, HP decreased its total energy use by 9 percent compared with 2008 (Dell Vostro A90 Battery) .

HP recovered a total of 118,000 tonnes of electronic products and supplies for recycling in 2009, including 61 million print cartridges.

In an April 2010 San Francisco Chronicle article, HP was one of 12 companies commended for "designing products to be safe from the start, following the principles of green chemistry." The commendations came from Environment California, an environmental advocacy group, who praised select companies in the Golden State and the Bay Area for their efforts to keep our planet clean and green (Toshiba Satellite P15 Battery) .

In May 2010, HP was named one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere Institute. This is the second year in a row HP has made the list. Ethisphere reviewed, researched and analyzed thousands of nominations in more than 100 countries and 35 industries to create the 2010 list. HP was one of only 100 companies to earn the distinction of top winner and was the only computer hardware vendor to be recognized (Toshiba Satellite Pro M10 Battery) .

Ethisphere honors firms that promote ethical business standards and practices by going beyond legal minimums, introducing innovative ideas that benefit the public.

HP is listed in Greenpeace’s Guide to Greener Electronics that ranks electronics manufacturers according to their policies on toxic chemicals, recycling and climate change. In May 2010, HP ranked 8th out of 18 leading electronics makers (Toshiba Portege 3110 Battery) .

Greenpeace gives HP credit for its active support to improve the EU Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive but calls for the company to eliminate harmful substances in its products. HP aims to complete its phase out of toxic vinyl plastic (PVC) and brominated flame retardands (BFRs) in 2011.It was the first PC maker after Apple Inc. to launch a desktop free of PVC and BFRs (Toshiba Portege R600 Battery) .

Brand and legacy

According to a Business Week Study, HP is currently the world´s 11th most valuable brand. Since its creation, the HP Logo has remained largely the same. Because of its extreme simplicity, the logo is recognized all over the world.

The company sponsors the HP Pavilion at San Jose, home to the NHL's San Jose Sharks (Toshiba Satellite 1900 Battery) .

HP has many sponsorships. One well known sponsorship is of Walt Disney World's Epcot Park's Mission: SPACE. Others can be found on Hewlett-Packard's website. From 1995 to 1999 they were the shirt sponsor of Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur. They also sponsored the BMW Williams Formula 1 team until 2006 (a sponsorship formerly held by Compaq), and as of 2010 sponsor Renault F1 (Toshiba Portege R200 Battery) .

Hewlett-Packard also has the naming rights arrangement for the HP Pavilion at San Jose, home of the San Jose Sharks NHLhockey team.

Agilent Technologies, not HP, retains the direct product legacy of the original company founded in 1939. Agilent's current portfolio of electronic instruments are descended from HP's very earliest products. HP entered the computer business only after its instrumentation competencies were well-established (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ21m Battery) .

When Agilent was spun off, items in the Corporate Archives were split-up along product lines, with Agilent retaining almost all of the original HP archives - only where there was duplication of material, was HP given early Test and Measurement material. Both companies retained an original 200A Audio Oscillator (SONY VAIO VGN-FZ18m Battery) .

After the acquisition of Compaq in 2002, HP has maintained the "Compaq Presario" brand on low-end home desktops and laptops, the "HP Compaq" brand on business desktops and laptops, and the "HP ProLiant" brand on Intel-architecture servers. (The "HP Pavilion" brand is used on home entertainment laptops and all home desktops.)

HP uses DEC's "StorageWorks" brand on storage systems; Tandem's "NonStop" servers are now branded as "HP Integrity NonStop" (Dell Vostro A90 Battery) .

Controversy

Main article: Hewlett-Packard spying scandal

On September 5, 2006, Newsweek revealed that HP's general counsel, at the behest of chairwoman Patricia Dunn, contracted a team of independent security experts to investigate board members and several journalists in order to identify the source of an information leak (Dell Vostro A860 Battery) .

In turn, those security experts recruited private investigators who used a spying technique known as pretexting. The pretexting involved investigators impersonating HP board members and nine journalists (including reporters for CNET, the New York Timesand the Wall Street Journal) in order to obtain their phone records. The information leaked related to HP's long-term strategy and was published as part of a CNET article in January 2006. Most HP employees accused of criminal acts have since been acquitted (Dell Vostro 2510 Battery) .

Hewlett-Packard has also been at the center of a fiasco in recent years. In November 2007, Hewlett-Packard released a BIOS update covering a wide range of laptops with the intent to speed up the computer fan as well as have it run constantly, whether the computer was on or off.The reason was to prevent the overheating of defective NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) that had been shipped to many of the original equipment manufacturers, including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Apple (Dell Vostro 1510 Battery) .

In July 2008, HP revealed an extension to the initial one-year warranty covering a few of the affected computers, but leaving many more without the protection, despite research showing that these computers were also affected.Since this point, several websites have been documenting the issue, most notably www.hplies.com, a forums dedicated to what they refer to as Hewlett-Packard's "multi-million dollar cover up" of the issue (HP Pavilion DV7 Battery) .

There have been several small claims lawsuits filed in several states, as well as suits being filed in other countries. Hewlett-Packard also faced a class action lawsuit in 2009 over their i7 processor computers. The complainants stated that their systems locked up within 30 minutes of powering on, consistently. Even after being replaced with newer i7 systems, the lockups continued (Dell Vostro 1000 battery) .

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