consumer hardware

The company that built an empire selling a printer with every computer is struggling to reinvent itself as environmentally minded consumers eschew paper.

Hewlett-Packard, whose $23 billion Imaging and Printing Group is based in San Diego, has been working to identify nontraditional printing markets -- essentially seeking to be the solution wherever words and graphics are printed.

The Palo Alto-based company once employed 2,000 people at its Rancho Bernardo [San Diego] campus.

As I watched the first few minutes of a TV program on the new $99 Netflix Player, I grew worried that the DVD rental service had gotten something horribly wrong with this foray into Internet video downloads.