Talk:Agilent Technologies

Paragraph removed 11 September 2003

It is interesting to note that HP printers and computers were developed as logging devices to record and process data from the instruments. By the late 1990s however, the tail was wagging the dog, with the instruments as an $8 billion business and the computers and printers as a $32 billion "afterthought". It was separated from HP in 1999, with the HP name being retained for marketing purposes for the computer and printer lines, even though the true lineage went to the instrument company.

The author of this paragraph obviously has an ax to grind. None of the sentences is accurate. The author has myopia for the HP 1000 series computers and associated printers -- HP first created desktop calculators. The tail was not wagging the dog, and computers and printers weren't an afterthought. Both companies retain "the true lineage," but I acknowledge on the HP page that Agilent "bears the legacy of the original instrument company." As Michael Feldman says, "anyone who says otherwise is itching for a fight." tbc

Hmmm ... Well, most anyone who works in the computer trade can tell you that there is precious little of the HP tradition in their current products or service standards. The HP tradition of "do it the best way you know how, and if it costs a lot, well, that's just the way it is", is dead, dead, dead. Their retail computer products (and to a leser extent even their printers) are appallingly cynical, jerry-built products. Compare with, for example, their ultra-solid prodcts from the 286 era. Weird designs, but built like tanks, and as reliable as sunrise. As for their new, outsourced service standards, the less said the better. Everything slashed to the bone. I had always fondly imagined that the instrumentation division was something of a throwback to the old, quality-focussed HP.

But how to accurately reflect all that in an encyclopedia entry, I don't know. Right now the entry reads like a PR department puff job. But it probably shouldn't read like a hatchet job either. (OK: I'd write it as a hatchet job, but then I have to work on the poxy damn things far more often than I'd like to. From time to time I have seriously considered introducing a flat-rule policy that we do not service HP or Compaq products, because they are too flimsy, often hopelessly incompatible with industry standards, and shoddily made. It's just not worth the trouble. But I haven't. (Yet.) We just charge extra. Not enough extra, mind you. They are (in general) far more difficult to work on than most systems, and the peripheral components in them (bottom-of-the-market junk, as a rule) have alarmingly high failure rates.) We really ought to mention their shift in market positioning. They used to be a quality brand once. Tannin 14:34, 11 Sep 2003 (UTC)

PS: This is an example. Tannin

I actually think it was metaphorically tail wagging the dog. The very first product produced by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard was actually not a calculator, but an Audio Oscillator. If I remember right, these were then also purchased by Disney to use in their new Feature lenght cartoon Fantasia. Oscillators are still today part of the product-portfolio of Agilent Technologies. Hewlett-Packard is also today one of the bigger customers of Agilent Technologies, as are actually most computer/communications/semiconductor -companies today... As for any discussion on the quality (or lack thereof) of HP products, it is misplaced here as the entry is about Agilent Technologies and not HP.

I'm sorry, but I think the removed paragraph was dead-bang accurate and not POV. If you go back and read, for example, HP Journal from the early computer years, it is very clear that HP was doing its computer and calculator work so that they would have access to instrument controllers (and so that engineers could buy extreme-performance calculators from the same company from which they bought extreme-performance instrumentation). The original "ThinkJet" printer was clearly developed to allow inexpensive graphical hard copies to be produced from instrumentation, but HP was also smart enough to realize that they had a hot property in their hands in the form of the invention of an entire class of printers: the inkjet.

It is also clear when you speak to people from HP's Test and Measurement and Medical divisions that they felt increasingly divorced from the computer and calculator folks. And, of course, HP also built by acquisition, buying Apollo Computer wholesale to eventually form HP's Unix workstation business. Apollo, was definetly not apart of the HP culture, and the rift between the original HP and the computer folks continued to grow. Finally, of course, Fiorina had nothing to do with HP culture and seemed intent on dismantling it.

It's definitely fair to say that the true lineage of David Packard's and Bill Hewlett's company went with Agilent. I'd like to see us restore this paragraph (or sommething very much like it) to the article.

Atlant 11:54, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

I think this whole conversation misses the point. Test and measurement is an industry where people will pay for quality; retail computers is not. It's like asking a hyena and baby deer to live in harmony; just not in the nature of hte beast. I don't think you should blame HP/computers for not living up to HP/historical; it is just not something that can happen. By the way, not everyone is so enamoured of HPs past; my boss taught me that HP stood for High priced, and that, at least in electronic test (multimeters, oscilliscopes, etc) you could always get an HP product equivalent from someone else with 90%+ functin for half the price - but this is now very ancient history.

Printer question

"buying Apollo Computer"

Is that where the absolutely horrible, cheap, short lived line of HP Apollo inkjet printers came from?

No, Apollo Computer made UNIX Workstations. The Printer line has nothing to do with them. Tsubasa 09:39, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Verigy

The link to Verigy in the main article just redirects back here to Agilent Technologies. Please someone create a stub page for Verigy. DFH 12:52, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

This is your chance to shine! Be bold and do it! :Atlant 12:57, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Done! (& thanks for the encouragement) DFH 18:13, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Scientific instrument

Where it says "scientific instruments", does it really mean Measuring instruments, or Laboratory equipment? --Byron Vickers 13:35, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Probably. We are, after all, talking about things like gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers and the like.

Atlant 13:48, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't phrase that very well. What I meant was more: "Which of these two was it meant to refer to" (I'm trying to fix the links to scientific instrument (instrument being a disambiguation page). However, I think you've still answered my question, so I'm going to go ahead and change it to [[Measuring instruments|scientific instrument]]s. If I got the wrong one, then I trust you'll fix it for me. Cheers. --Byron Vickers 14:09, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Headquarters

In the table at the top, it says Agilent's headquarters are in Santa Clara, but in the picture below, it says it is in Palo Alto

Removed unsourced assertion

I removed the statement:

Some claim that Agilent, not HP, is the direct successor of the company culture invented by Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard and known as the HP Way.

It appears to be a vestige of the above discussion from several years ago, but now it sticks out as unsourced POV (and POV isn't neutralized by attributing statements to "some"). Tlesher 17:02, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

In addition the assertion is not even true. I worked for Agilent for 5 years and the old HP way was long gone. The company had had many layoffs and sold off much of the business so few felt any sort of loyality to the company --RobertGary1 (talk) 05:57, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Spun off

The article says "All of the businesses not related to computers, storage, and imaging were spun off from HP in 1999 to form Agilent." The term 'spun off' is ambiguous to me for a couple of reasons:

• Is this is legal term that has a definition associated with it that I don't understand?
• Does it mean that HP is now the parent company, or is there no longer any association with HP?

It may be that 'spun off' is a term which means something specific to a particular audience, but I don't understand it. (I'm from England.) Could the meaning be expanded in the artical? Nicgarner (talk) 12:49, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Spin off is a fairly well known term - be it high tech, or industry in general. It's certainly in a few online dictionaries and there's an article on wikipedia explaining the term too --87.194.185.247 (talk) 21:15, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

A Spin-Off is when Company A forms a new company (Company B), in which Company B is not directly owned by Company A, but is owned by the Owners of Company A. Thus if Company A is a private company, Company B would be a new company, seperate from Company A, but owned by the private owners of Company A. If Company A is public, then the newly formed Company B gives out stock to the existing shareholders of Company A. Which results in two seperate legal entities (companies) that have the same owners. This is done when a company feels some of it's products don't have a purpose in their core product line and wish to push-off those products to a new company that focus strictly on those product lines. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.225.216.197 (talk) 13:43, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I think a better term is "divested" https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/divest See meaning #3 SageGreenRider (talk) 04:19, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

List of products?

What is the general consensus on creating a list of Agilent (HP Test and Measurement) products? Personally, I'm always running across HP product numbers (e.g., HP 5334B) and wondering things like: What is it? When was it first sold? Is it still being sold? Is there a replacement/upgrade? What makes the "A" different from the "B" model?

Is this suitable material for wikipedia? Scottr9 (talk) 17:27, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it would be suitable, but that's just my opinion. Besides, there are way too many products - what level of granularity would you want? The few fairly notable ones are already mentioned - HPLC, ICT, O'scopes, network analysers and so on. --Sjhill (talk) 21:22, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

mmm I don't really think it's suitable for wikipedia. BTW in my experience you can usually find the products on agilent's site. For example the 5334B is an obsolete and no longer supported "100 MHz Universal Counter" and the recommended replacement is the 53220A. Plugwash (talk) 02:13, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Time to blow it up and start over?

This article reads like a news release and I can't find a "good" version to go back to. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 00:15, 26 July 2015 (UTC)