What is Digg?99 Comments
- Br3ach, on 07/19/2008, -2/+126Each sheet was probably made of endangered white rhino hide or something.
- Jhiaxuz, on 07/20/2008, -7/+47It pays to read some of the comments you know...
From poster Ichatburn:
"The explanation is pretty straightforward...
HP obviously stores their license documents as products, each with an individual box, in their warehouse. It's an item on a shelf, with a barcode, that gets picked and dropped onto a conveyor. You can't do that with a piece of paper.
Then, if a customer orders a computer and needs a license, they just pull the computer's box and the license box, and stick them in a packing box, and they are done. No opening, no checking, no taping, no mess. Of course, it gets messed up if you order 16 of them, but at the same time, it's probably cheaper to do it this way than to have someone pick and pack by hand.
I think people commenting on this stuff and posting to the Consumerist really don't have a sense of how large and automated this process is...
Anyone who is interested, take 20 minutes and read the Anandtech visit to Newegg.com's warehouse." - inactive, on 07/20/2008, -3/+23With Consumerist you always know there is missing part of the story so they can sensationalize their ***** articles.
My guess it was a backhanded response to the recipient who complained about HP's confusing licenses. I have no idea though since there really isnt much of a story to work with here. - bravo1995, on 07/20/2008, -5/+24Just another case of a company not teaching their employees what they should already know. It's called common sense, and 80% of the world doesn't have any grasp of it.
- pharekyz, on 07/20/2008, -4/+19I'm surprised each piece of paper wasn't wrapped in bubble wrap.
- Step1Mark, on 07/20/2008, -0/+14at that point they cant mass produce the CDs. So, its not really cost effective.
- thcobbs, on 07/20/2008, -1/+15More like the boss is out of town and some shipping clerk was really bored.
- Mothrog, on 07/20/2008, -2/+15Run along, fan boy. The reason Apple pulls in profits is because they also have a fan base of morons that will pay their prices for their shiny, overpriced crap.
- Mrdudeperson, on 07/20/2008, -1/+13Only a few boxes away from building an epic fort!
- raptordrew, on 07/20/2008, -3/+13That's normal - Apple does this ***** to my shop all the time, we'll get a 24x30x30 package that's holding a couple screen cables, an inverter, and maybe a DC jack. They all get pretty good shipping discounts, so why not just grab the closest box?
- WestonP, on 07/20/2008, -0/+10They don't put it on a CD or in an e-mail because paper is preferred for legal reasons. Other companies do the same, and it's not uncommon to ship a copy of the license agreement for each license purchased. The only real surprise here is that HP put each set in it's own little box.
- felipe82, on 07/20/2008, -2/+11how can it be common if 80% of the world population doesn't have any?
- inactive, on 07/20/2008, -1/+9Unless HP made you pay for the extra packaging, why the ***** would you complain about it? Just shut up and be glad your software license was delivered on a golden plate. It astonish me how some people are just begging for bad shipping and poor services.
When I first read the title I was expecting something foolish like the software key printed on the outside of the box for anyone to see. But noooo, that idiot is pissed that his papers was packaged with care. - inactive, on 07/20/2008, -1/+8Believe me a lot thought goes into shipping boxes.
First, you can't ship stuff wrapped in paper.
Second, the box it was in was a product box, not a shipping box.
I bet you would be the first to bitch to the Consumerist if your mouse didn't survive the shipping. - thedragon4453, on 07/20/2008, -1/+8Its one of those terms like "military intelligence."
- robsonde, on 07/20/2008, -1/+8thats normal for HP, we get it at work all the time.
our account manager says basicly the same as Ichatburn:
It's an item on a shelf, with a barcode, that gets picked and dropped onto a conveyor. You can't do that with a piece of paper. - davidwasman, on 07/20/2008, -3/+9My thoughts exactly.
I know because I would do the same thing to some smarmy asshat corporate schlub, given the chance. - Jasonstech, on 07/20/2008, -4/+10As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Each wife had seven sacks, each sack had seven cats, each cat had seven kits. Kits, cats, sacks, wives, how many were going to St. Ives?
You have 30 seconds, call me back at 555-000 and the answer... - spocksbrain, on 07/20/2008, -3/+9"Hewlett-Packard's head of product packaging was unable to explain the odd shipping choice, as he is currently en route to St. Ives."
Clever, very clever. I almost didn't see what you did there. - PhilLesh69, on 07/20/2008, -2/+7DarkDX, the iphone is nothing special or unique.
I have a XV6700 that I bought in late 2005 that was 3G before Apple released their 2G Iphone two years later.
This phone could do everything the 3G iphone can do, and it cost me $149 before the $50 rebate, back in late 2005. Plus, it has a qwerty keyboard, bluetooth, wifi, and 3G EVDO. I can even use it to connect my laptop to the EVDO network for internet access anywhere.
The phone has web, email, sms, mms, a camera, mp3, video, word, outlook calendar, and access to probably 50,000 applications written by outside developers. You can even modify everything from the interface to resource management if you know what you're doing.
Can you sling on an iphone? I can on my pocket PC. I can watch full cable TV, and even my DVR, on my phone.
Can you SSH on the Iphone? - Mothrog, on 07/20/2008, -1/+6And here we have Joe Typical Crapple user, so brainwashed that he can't even imagine someone not wanting some silly Apple product.
- sockpuppets, on 07/20/2008, -2/+7Right after she ruined the company you mean?
- brkhobowriter, on 07/20/2008, -1/+6Nah, it's papyrus. With black diamond ink printed from a rhino's ass
- insomniac8400, on 07/20/2008, -0/+5It's not padded enough to be thrown around by UPS. The time it would take for a person to manually tape brown paper over the item would cost way more. And packing peanuts are not stupid, I bet you would have expected them to replace your items if something punctured the box and cut a hole in your keyboard? Remember they have to over do it because a few pennies in shipping materials can save them millions in replacements. And if UPS was being bitched at for damaged items, they would most certainly require that you better pack them before shipping more. You act as if those packing peanuts have no reason to be there. Also remember they get merchandise on pallets from the manufacturer packed all nice and neat, that is not how the item gets shipped to you. Making more padding necessary.
- pakakapa, on 07/20/2008, -3/+8im sure the shipping&handling guys just did that for teh lulz
- cedarpointfan, on 07/19/2008, -5/+9I don't get why companies cant put licenses on a CD.
- krnldmp, on 07/20/2008, -4/+8Don't be silly. It's made of pure profit and that's why its so carefully packaged.
- Gullop, on 07/20/2008, -0/+4http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/18/hp_packagi ...
Post the original. - jameskong15, on 07/20/2008, -0/+4I'll take this over some douche packing my computer parts in a paper bag + box combo any day.
- Samadhi007, on 07/20/2008, -0/+4That's a completely redundant and unneeded extra step, much like posting a link to the Consumerist that itself is just a repackaged Register article. ..
- insomniac8400, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3It was aggregated into one larger box, so no they are not.
- inactive, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3Are you kidding? $20-$65. All of those boxes didn't cost more that $5.
You need to think on economies of scale. - carbon12, on 07/20/2008, -2/+5People are burying a "Die Hard 3" reference? What has Digg become?
- FrankTheTank17, on 07/20/2008, -1/+4At least their helping pay for the fine employees at the United States Post Office.
- kucing, on 07/20/2008, -0/+3Obviously you have never worked in a factory before. In a perfect world, every business will find the cheapest and most efficient ways around production. Sadly this isn't the case. If it works, why change it? The bureaucracy involved in adding a separate department as I suggested will probably get shuffled around forever, and they stick to "what has always worked before." I may not know how exactly how HP operations work but you can't seriously believe that shipping 16 licenses in 17 large boxes is cheaper than using a simple brown letter envelope? Sorry.. I still blame HP for its stupidity.
- Mrdudeperson, on 07/20/2008, -1/+3Dude, all of you need to SHUT UP. Yes he does make the front page a lot. And the truth is most of the stuff he submits is in fact interesting. But the point of digg is to learn about things from around the internets. And if you don't like him don't read the stuff he submits and ignore him. Some of us like the stuff he submits. So stop complaining!
- gotamd, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2The box is not that large. Look at the other objects (which are mostly obscured) for scale. It's about the size of an average LCD monitor box in my estimation. They put *32* pieces of paper inside *16* smaller boxes. That was all inside the one monitor-sized box.
- insomniac8400, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2Definitely not a surprise considering the dollar value of each license.
- Pusod, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2from what i gather about 30% of diggers vote for his submissions.
- scsp85, on 07/19/2008, -6/+8Its fragile!
- inactive, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2That's funny. I killed a man in Reno, just to watch him die
- DeFex, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2only if you buy them at the post office or some other rip off place.
- insomniac8400, on 07/20/2008, -0/+2Those boxes probably cost them 1-2 bucks. I hate to say it, but it is entirely possible a padded envelope would cost them more.
- luchid, on 07/20/2008, -0/+1We don't care about you.
- insomniac8400, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1Shipping on a large scale like that is with a contract and ease of shipping is going to be a huge factor. Weight is probably not the biggest factor. And cardboard is not heavy. And by 1-2 dollars I meant the price of all the packaging for all the licenses of that one shipment. Not each individual sub box.
- PhilLesh69, on 07/20/2008, -0/+1Well, considering how some mindless consumers interpret things, if HP was mailing out licenses that might cost as much as $1,000, or even more, a piece, in a basic envelope, the recipient might feel like he was getting ripped off.
It's funny, because the message the recipient should have gotten in this case is, "we made so much money off you that we can afford to ship air along with your licenses." - df12, on 07/21/2008, -0/+1RedHat does this too, and Vertias did the same thing until a year or so ago... Neither quite this bad but still completely wasteful.
Case in point about 9 months ago I got 10 RHEL AS4 licenses. Each license came in the usual RedHat shrink wrapped retail box (no media was in the box). Each retail box was then inside a slightly larger plain cardboard box. Finally all 10 of the card board boxes came in 2 boxes (5 each) about the size of a large shoe box. All that packaging for what amounts to 10 note card size pieces of paper. - Mothrog, on 07/20/2008, -2/+3More like person with brain that knows better than to buy overpriced Apple crap.
- insomniac8400, on 07/20/2008, -2/+3Nice attempt at logic. But if that was cheaper they would do it. Remember they are a public business that needs exponential growth forever to keep stock holders happy. And it is not stupid if it is cheaper. As to the environmental waste, bitch at the recipient to recycle the boxes.
- grumpyrain, on 07/20/2008, -0/+1That only half makes sense. The same economies of scale that work to allow $2 boxes *also* allow sub $0.50 padded envelopes. But in this case, a standard A4 envelope with a cardboard backing would have been more than sufficient.
Shipping charges by weight and by size, so the expense of using a box is even higher still. Make no mistake. This was not done as a deliberate cost cutting exercise. Each license was auto picked by a robotic arm from a massive warehouse and chucked onto a conveyor belt. -
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