Rahul leaves HP

His blog and FB posts have not been the most impressive.

Care to provide a brief summary?

Well, you can check his blog out for yourself. His FB posts tend to rehash obvious points.

Well I for one liked his lego blog post.

Lego posts are always an exception.

cloud computing is the future either that or gold spiked lace wigs with smart devices in them

...but it's digital Lego. I think it should go back in the Fail pile.

Digital legos are better than no legos at all.


Actually, a lot of Rahul's more recent posts seem to focus on console games like Forza. Disappointing from a former boutique PC vendor.

Resting on your laurels is easy when you've already made millions.

Hmm maybe that's because he works for microshit and m$ makes xbox and forza is an xbox title.

Since the i222 is no gaming pc I think that its a good excuse to start installing ubuntu on more of my pc's.

Constant battle, holding off consolitis.

article on HP with Meg Whiteman. VoodooPc is mentioned as a mistake, not good. I'm sure more come out soon on the buyouts of Voodoo PC and PALM. Especially when all the indicators were there not buy.

forbes article

Not too impressed with Meg Whitman.

Depends on what side of the fence you were on (HPs acquisition of Voodoo was likely just fine for Rahul), but how was HP buying Voodoo a good thing? It seemed like a reactionary move to Dell buying Alienware. And I strongly suspect Rahul influenced the whole deal more than HP. Since the acquisition, many hints have been dropped that Voodoo needed an out.

The question changes a bit when you consider it from Voodoo's point of view as opposed to HP's.

Interesting article. Shortly after I became acquainted with Voodoo (and, unfortunately, after I received my computer) it became evident to me that the company had cash flow problems. This is typical of a young company. But as service and delivery continued to become worse the need for Rahul to find a white knight became more and more evident. If HP or some other company hadn't come to the rescue, I do not think Voodoo would have been in business for much longer.

That is why it was a better deal for them than it was for HP.

Especially when you consider that the only thing HP has left from that deal is an Envy name on what many consider to be mediocre laptops.

With HP it is not so much mediocre hardware specs as it is the hardware failure rate. The only thing they use to make well was printers, and from what I have seen in recent years they no longer even do that well. (I am talking about home grade printers, I have not cared to own or recommend a client purchase an hp laser jet in recent years)

If you want to compare apple and voodoo pc there are some key differences that come to mind.

Apple thoroughly torture tests all of there products before releasing them to market. This seems like it was a new concept to voodoo as I remember reading a blog post by Raul how shocked he was at all of the punishment something had to sustain before hp backed it. This would have probably helped voodoo avoid releasing d87p based envy's and may have helped make there water cooling systems more bullet proof (Although this is unlikely as they were using off the shelf components) It seems that warranty repairs is probably the most likely cause of poor cash flow.

Another thing that comes to mind is adaptability and the ability to keep your company relevant. I remember a number of years back apple was not having the easiest time. So what did they do? They released the ipod and later the iphone. Now when apple needs a bit more money all they have to do is fix a few "problems" with there iphone and release the next one and people line up like idiots the night before just for the privilege to purchase one.

Another problem is the way warranty repairs were diagnosed. I realize voodoo was a small company but I don't feel that under any circumstance should a user be expected to open there own system to ensure connectors are seated. Especially in a laptop, As was the case with our m780 at work.

Also ethelred if you are still interested in selling your m780 you might want to ask ADOR if hes interested.

Digital Storm claims that they do a 72 hours stress test on all of their builds. I cannot vouch for that, other than to say that my system has been bulletproof so far. (Knock on wood.)

If he has something he wants to get rid of all I can say is hit me up, then we can go from there.

I am glad you are happy with the x7200 lago. I bet you see what I meant about portability now though (or lack there of)

Bagged up including the power brick, it is over 20 lbs. Definitely not something that I would want to carry to work every day.

Voodoo also claimed to do stress tests, but I was a bit suspicious of that claim.

Incidentally, Apple reinvented itself by streamlining and focusing its portfolio.

I know that my RAGE did at least come with benchmark numbers, but it seems likely that benchmarking is the closest thing to stress testing that they ever did.