Hitachi says: Get it right, Eva!

Eva,

Your May 14 article entitled, "Do you know the way from San Jose?" included an inaccurate statement regarding Hitachi GST's manufacturing operations. Contrary to what was reported, Hitachi has no current plans to move "all hard drive production to China by 2006". Hitachi's Chinese manufacturing operations are limited to media and other drive component manufacturing. The media is the component of the hard drive that electronic data is written on in the data-recording process.

In August, 2003 Hitachi GST announced a three-year initiative to relocate the majority of its media manufacturing operations from San Jose, CA and Odawara, Japan to its facility in Shenzhen, China. The company expects to begin media manufacturing at its Shenzhen facility by the fourth quarter of 2004 and will be in full production by the first half of 2006.

Hitachi GST has nine manufacturing locations worldwide and yesterday announced plans for a substantial manufacturing expansion at its Thailand facility. The company is expanding its hard drive production in Thailand from 30 million to 60 million units annually, including production of the one-inch Microdrive, 2.5-inch Travelstar and 3.5-inch Deskstar product lines. Last November, Hitachi announced a consolidation of its enterprise hard drive manufacturing in Singapore.

We would appreciate you posting an article correction that accurately represents Hitachi GST's manufacturing plans. In the future, please contact us if you are soliciting company comment or fact-checking article content.

Regards
Jim Pascoe
Corporate Communications
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies

[Eva appears to have got the INQ in trouble, yet again. Ed.]

Googol, Google, Goggles

No case: Barney Google came out in 1919. (I haven't heard of King Features Syndicate suing either.)

Here.

First I'm not sure how a coined word, which isn't trademarked, can have any claim to Google bringing attention to Googol? May they got the whole idea from the term "googly eyes" by dropping the y and adding the e from eye. This would make much more since than borrowing from a mathematic term. Isn't the world just getting crazier every day and the people in it greedier.

Interesting Article.

Regards,
Jim Ward

The AMD Richfest

Hi Mike,

Very funny to read your story about the Richtfest - it sounded all so surreal seen through your eyes. You've witnessed the traditional ceremony, people do this when they build a new home just the same.

No wonder the fab was finished only in a skeletal state, "Richtfest" means the celebration of just that, respectively the wooden beaming of the roof.

The "ersatz Jerry Sanders III" was a Carpenter in historical attire - tough trousers in case the saw goes awry and hat to protect the ears when carrying splintering beams, I suppose.

The poetry is usually knocked up in a hurry, i.e. barely rhymes, to the effect that all is going well and wishing good luck to finish the building, with a few jokes strewn in for good measure. Good luck is also meant by breaking glass but I guess you gathered as much. Usually the drinking is done by the landlord, i.e. Hector should have had the pleasure. Same as christening a ship, really (quite the same, the ship will obviously never be finished at this stage, as it would be to heavy to roll into the water but I digress.)

So much for your exclamation of "What was all that about then?".

Very amusing read though.

Keep up the funny writing!

Regards
Andreas

INQ confused about Richtfest

Hi Mike,

you seem to be quite confused over German habits when doing a Richtfest. The JSIII replacement was a carpenter wearing the traditional carpenter's costume. In fact you can still sometimes see them travelling like through Germany when they gather experience in their jobs at several places.

The Richtfest ceremony is usually conducted by a carpenter. He says a few somewhat ceremonic words (nothing too spectacular, perhaps a nice rhyme about the building) and then there may be the smashing of glasses although I am currently not aware that it is usually part of the habit. I haven't participated in such an event for some time...

But I assume you have already known all that and ignored it deliberately to be able to give JSIII an appropriate appearance ;-)

Regards,
Thorsten

India: Mahabharat

It seems like a brash and a derogative thing for him to say towards US workers but here is the real deal.

I spent two months in India recently and was astounded at the different type of market which is out there. Economically you have to wonder how countries like the UK, US, and any other European country function! Here is the run down, besides technology products, workers in India get paid more than US workers. Yes that's right get out your calculators. $55,000 times 45 rupees is 2,499,197 rupees. Wait, but the average Indian tech support person is only getting paid 250-350 thousand rupees, what in Jerry Sanders III (An angel) name am I talking about? It's called purchasing power!

If I get a dollar in the US, in the UK, and in India lets see who can come back with the most stuff. In the US you can get maybe 2 name brand cokes, or perhaps a candy bar, if your lucky maybe a little more. In the UK, I'm not sure you can buy a coke with a US dollar, maybe you can. In India, try 9 cokes, or several different candy bars. Now what about help? In the US I can get someone to marginally acceptable clean my house, she'll vacuum my floor, perhaps take all my clothes and chunk them in the hamper, (steal a little money from my drawer), and be on her way. $40 bucks, which is of course if you live in Houston and have some “illegal alien” do it for you. I don't live in the UK but I am sure it's around the same or higher. In India? Well we're back on that same dollar. It costs $0.75 cents in India for someone to come, mop my entire floor, do all the laundry, hang it to dry, cook a meal and pretty much whatever else you need done. A little more interested are we? Purchasing power is what makes the currency worth something. Some items do not change in price such as televisions, and computers, but other things are relatively inexpensive there allowing for that purchase of a tv or a computer easily. Oh yea, what about cable tv? Try $1.50, during the India vs. Pakistan Cricket games people were going up in arms over a rate hike to $2.

I haven't even mentioned a little something called prescriptions and drugs. In India look forward to name brand drugs for sometimes %1 of the cost in the US or almost anywhere else. Now that is purchasing power. Healthcare in India is actually so cheap, you could go there on round trip tickets, have whatever procedures you wanted done, and come back for maybe half of what it would cost in the US.

It's not that stores are robbing us blind. We have to pay them so much because they have to buy the property, maintain it, pay the employees, and obviously the employees have to live in the same country so they have to be paid reasonably also. Ballmer is talking about bringing the purchasing power of the dollar higher allowing for a drop in pay, increasing the amount of money people have to spend. If you go to India, your money is worth hundreds maybe thousands of times what it used to be worth. A modest increase of purchasing power in the US and other European countries (15 euro for some sausage! Give me a Break!) will be a greater impact than a $500 income tax refund or even a 5% interest gaining bank account!

Spilling Inq
Ajay Desai

HP lawyers, drooling

The lawyers must be just drooling over HP's attempt to change the terms on Compaq's existing support contracts. HP argues that:

All previous warranty statements have “Life time telephone support”. pmCompaq warranty statement never had word FREE in there. We will be providing telephone support, but now there will be a charge for Service and Support]

There isn't a juror in the country who does not have a warranty on a car, washing machine, or whatever, which states that the manufacturer will repair/support a product for a given time but does not say "FREE" because that's what is implied by "what is covered by the warranty". What isn't covered by the warranty is invariably listed out in great detail, in writing, on the same document. So all possible jurors have a personal stake in not letting HP set a precedent to allow manufacturers to devalue existing warranty coverage by retroactively removing the implicit "free". Otherwise "we will repair or replace the appliance at our option" becomes worthless, because, hey, "it didn't say for FREE".

Expect a really, really, REALLY humongous punitive award when this finally comes to trial.

Name, email, supplied