Hi All,
 Just to clarify

"HP is valued at $53 Billion, but I'd imagine most
of that is related to the diverse range of PC peripherals, and their near
monopoly on test equipment."

Agilent technology (a spinoff) has all Medical, Test/Measurement and
Chemical Analysis equipment now.

But the point being that HP is mostly a PC/Printer company is most likely
correct.

Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Chase" <bdc@world.std.com>
To: "Dave McGuire" <mcguire@neurotica.com>
Cc: "NetBSD/vax Mailing List" <port-vax@netbsd.org>; <port-alpha@netbsd.org>
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2001 11:33 PM
Subject: Re: Slightly Off-Topic...


> On Mon, 25 Jun 2001, Dave McGuire wrote:
> > On June 25, Brian Chase wrote:
>
> > > The gov't will keep them afloat for as long as they need them.  Within
the
> > > next few years I see SGI going the way of Cray, HP Convex, and
Thinking
> > > Machines.
> >
> >   HP/Convex (more specifically, the Exemplar line) are doing pretty
> > well nowadays, from what I've read.  Those are some ALL-BALLS-POWERFUL
> > systems.
> >
> >   TMC is flat-out gone, as far as I know..
> >
> >   But Cray...did Cray go out of business when I wasn't looking?  Last I
> > heard (yesterday) they were doing pretty well.
> >
> >   Or was that not what you were suggesting...?
>
> My point is that they're going to fall to the wayside and into marginally
> profitable niche markets.  They won't offer any real competition to the
> bigger players.  One only needs to look at the graph for 5 year market
> value of SGI to see that they've been in steady decline for the duration
> of that time.
>
>   The "good guys"
>   ---------------
>   IBM has a market cap of $196 Billion US
>   Sun has a market cap of $49 Billion US
>   Oracle has a market cap of $100 Billion US
>
>   The "bad" guys
>   ---------------
>   Compaq has a market cap of $23 Billion US
>   Intel has a market cap of $192 Billion US
>   Microsoft has a market cap of $371 Billion US
>
>   The down and out
>   ----------------
>   SGI has a market cap of $203 _Million_ US
>   Cray has a market cap of $91 _Million_ US
>
> The bad guys in total have twice as much money as the good guys in total.
> It's hard to beat them.  HP is valued at $53 Billion, but I'd imagine most
> of that is related to the diverse range of PC peripherals, and their near
> monopoly on test equipment.  They also have a fairly healthy PC business
> and their servers are going the way of Itanium.  Apple Computer is valued
> at about $8 Billion now but they're being kept alive in part by Microsoft.
>
> As for Thinking Machines, the last I heard about them was that they're
> still around but in the data mining business (probably because the spooks
> needed this).  I did find a news release from June 7, 1999 saying that
> Oracle bought them.  Hehe... well, see now--one only has to take a look at
> http://www.think.com to see what noble end they've reached.  Wow.
>
> It is indeed very sad to see that the companies with the best technology
> are finishing last.
>
> -brian.
>
>