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Guy's dot-comment: why should we trust big computer companies?

The reason I'm sceptical about all the promises Hewlett-Packard and Compaq are making is simple: I don't trust big computer companies. It is in their nature to promise more than they can possibly deliver, and they aren't even conscious of the fact that they can't deliver, when they promise.

The old joke about car salesmen went: "How can you tell when a car salesman is lying?" and the answer was: "His lips move." It was updated in the 80s to "What's the difference between a car salesman and a computer salesman?" and the answer: "A car salesman knows when he's lying."

Computer salesman know that what they are promising is possible. With computers, everything is possible. Just not this week. But, for all the people at the top know, it might be this week. They know that the market demand is there; and marketing involves analysing market demand and satisfying it. So that's what they promise to do.

Quite a lot of the time, what they promise actually is feasible, and happens. Sometimes, what they say is clearly nonsense, and they know it - and yet, somehow, it happens anyway. And sometimes, it's clear that they are sure they're right, have done their "due diligence" and studied the subject, and are still way, way off beam.

When it comes to big mergers, history shows that they are, basically, shareholder scams.

Digital Equipment was, ten years ago, one of the world's biggest computer companies. It had fallen on hard times; staff were becoming de-motivated, and plans were dessicated, uninspired, and me-too. And Compaq took it over.

Today, it's obvious that Compaq got very, very little out of the deal. It got the Alpha chip - except Intel got the factory that made the chip, and quickly made it clear that Alpha had no future, and that the Intel-HP designs would be what the future wanted. And I simply don't know what else it got that you could point to, today, and say: "Without the DEC takeover, Compaq wouldn't have this ... "

Over the years, I've watched Symantec take over software companies one by one. What's left, is not the sum of the parts; it's basically Peter Norton and some other utilities. And I could list several other examples.

So: HP is the new brand, and there's a three-year, detailed plan. I know this, because Stephen Gill, the UK country general manager of the merged HP, said so. "Our competitors don't have three-year roadmaps. We do. We had them on day one, for the launch of the merger." And he went on to explain that if they hadn't had to arrange things with Compaq and HP so that they knew what was going on, they wouldn't have been able to make this three-year plan.

Well, yes; I can understand that. But then we get down to details.

Details: like, what happens to the Jornada? We know that iPaq is going to be "the brand" for mobile HP. And no doubt the iPaq is the more successful of the two brands. But there's a problem: the iPaq is out of date.

The iPaq can be rescued; but not if they stay with the iPaq shape - which is designed to fit into an iPaq "jacket" for expansion. The jacket was brilliant when they first came out; it allowed you to plug a PCMCIA card into the device, giving you network connections, modems, and any add-on. Well, that's just not needed. Today's iPaq has built-in Bluetooth - not much need for any other addons, is there? What you might want, of course, is a compact flash slot, as you have on the Jornada.

What you definitely want, is something slim and modern, like the new Toshiba - maybe half the thickness of the iPaq. What you definitely don't want is something huge and heavy, like the iPaq itself. Anybody who'd made a three-year plan would know this. The new management team, excellent thought they are, don't.

Strategic decisions like: "The handheld brand will be iPaq"will probably impress the City of London - but they better have a clearer idea of what is going to happen in the real world. Strategic decisions are no substitute for knowing what you're talking about.