Environmentally Friendly HP Computers
Environmentally Friendly HP Computers A friend at HP (who will remain nameless) told me the following story: It seems that HP was trying to sell the HP 150 to a large Japanese engineering corporation, emphasizing it's compact size and lots of integrated features (touchscreen, HPIB, space for a built in thermal printer, nationalized software, etc). The HP salesperson strove long and hard, but was refused. In desperation, he asked what HP could do to change the 150 to meet the Japanese requirements. The Japanese buyer replied "Make it more environmentally friendly. You could add, say, a fish tank or something." "One moment," the sales droid said. The HP sales droid made a long-distance call to the HP workstation design team in Corvallis, Oregon and asked if the built-in thermal printer could be replaced with an injection molded clear plastic fish tank. The engineers thought about it for a few seconds, and said that he didn't see why it couldn't. So, for at least a year, HP manufactured and shipped to Japan several thousand HP 150s with the FTF -- the Fish Tank Feature. I don't think it was ever available in the US Of course, this may be apocryphal, but of any company I know, HP is just weird enough to do it. -- David Boyes | Being dead is less lonely than being alive in dboyes@rice.edu | only that you aren't awake to notice it.