Hi again, Randy, Heathkit, Message #15 Posted by Norm on 3 June 2003, 12:44 p.m., in response to message #13 by Randy Sloyer
Randy wrote:
> While I don’t care for the form factor of, nor do I need a graphing calculator, One fact that should be considered is that HP currently has no graphing calculator in the product line. Nobody gets rich that way.
Hi Randy, I dont understand, There is a 48G+ a 48GX and also something called a "49" . I dont think they were discontinued. I think HP therefore has several models of HP graphing calculator.
Randy wrote:
> I would be interested to hear what you think caused the demise of Heathkit, other than just an executive decision to kill off a 40+ year old company with a great legacy.
Hi Randy, I dont have all the facts, except that Heathkit was built by hard work of decent people going back into the 50's and 60's, it was completely and totally profitable. Then some kind of space aliens sat down in the boardroom, and within a space of about 3 years they destroyed the company, leaving a great gaping hole in a key part of the 1969 'moonshot America' national-cultural landscape.
That's all I really know, so anything else i say is a speculation:
They sat down in the boardroom, said, "here we are, the MBA monstrosities, the takeover kings of a 30 year legacy of people's hard work, hopes and dreams. We have taken over what other people built, consuming their entire lives to build this company, its profits, and its bank account, and we took it over and own it and it cost us not a dime. Thanks to our clever boardroom stock swindles. So now we are millionaires countless times over. We have plenty of profits and plenty of customers and a balance sheet in the black, SO, GENTLEMEN, what do you say we see how quickly we can incinerate this thing.
They did this in three quick ways:
(a) They decided they would compete against the already dominant Microsoft Intel PC consortium, with their "Heath Zenith" computers,and they blew a ton of money on computers, for the laughable intention to dominate over Microsoft.
(b) With the company pretty well ruined by that decision, they decided to completely and totally eliminate the sale of all kits (apparently, a simple hatred of those types of people who buy them..... like when Carly eliminates all classic engineers' calculators, but retains the 12C for MBA's, this is just stereotypical hate-bias of MBA against engineer) so apparently the management didn't like people who build kits.
(c) With the kits eliminated, the retirement account raided, the customers scattered to the 4 winds (F U all you stinking rotten customers) they morphed the company into something entirely unrecognizable,where it exists to this day. Kind of like when in "X-men" they turned the Senator into a mutant? You start out with a Senator, you finish with nothing but a sploosh of water. Similarly, the MBA mutants mutated Heathkit into something completely unrecognizable to the customers and employees who built it. They set it up to milk community college funds (gov't public school funds) to sell their ho-hum little 3-ring binder educational books.
Similar to TI and HP trying to milk students with their useless graphing calculators. Well, I think those courses might be tolerable or adequate. Even those are goint to be somewhat dated. I saw a community college student using one very recently, in a course. The material is a little dated..... they were explaining how to use glue logic, like 8-bit shift registers. That's cute but the only problem is, who is going to do that anymore. So I think they are just milking whatever remains from the least interesting of an old ancient product line that profitable when it was destroyed, and could have continued to be profitable.
In all my years of enjoying Heathkit (70s, 80s) the 3-ring binder courses were the LAST THING I would ever look at. Hey, I wanted to build a giant clock, or build my own calculator, or my own stereo receiver, etc etc. They got rid of that stuff because it was fun. They kept the 3-ring binder stuff because it was stupid and dull and boring. Classic MBA stuff... MBA's are stupid and dull and boring so their decisions reflect this (they are also very very very selfish, very very very greedy, "gimme my 25,000 square foot home with showers that have 8 showerheads") so that gives you 4 major adjectives for MBA's.
So all that customer goodwill earned over 30 years was incinerated in an instant. Tektronix did the same thing by annihilating all their analog scopes w/o exception, apparently in a simple stereotype-based dislike of the people who used them. HP now does the same thing with engineer's calculators. The country is in a recession and it does not surprise me. This is not an "Osama recession" this is an "MBA Recession". The MBA drunkards scr*wed anybody who invested into stocks, they eliminate products we want to buy, they bring in cheap chinese throwaway trash by the boatload and stock the shelves with it, and charge us like it was made of solid gold. If I want something as simple as the preferred Japanese built calculator watch, I have to import it directly thru eBay, because the merchants wont sell what I want to buy. Helllo recession !
People are now 'hunkered in their bunker' and the economy stinks, but with the foul stink from the boardroom, does it really surprise anybody. Thank you MBA's.
You asked, Randy, so I have answered. This is my opinion about Heathkit (and Tektronix and HP) all destroying some of the most charming products I have ever seen in my life to this day. If my opinion is wrong you are welcome to correct me.
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