Siemens, the unprofitable number four, seems poised to leave the industry, probably by selling out to an Asian vendor, suggests Mr Lindberg.
"Basically they gave it a typical vendor assessment," Mr McGarvey says.
A former hot dog vendor, Mr. Street earned a law degree from Temple University in 1975.
The costs ranged from $10,000 to $40,000 per vendor, Mr. Fuentes said.
"I wasn't that comfortable exposing our database to an outside vendor," Mr. Greenberg said.
In the case of one vendor, Mr. Crain found that he could actually infiltrate a power station's control center from afar.
Variations of this trick are repeated as Madlenka visits the Indian news agent Mr. Singh, the Italian ice-cream vendor Mr. Ciao, a German neighbor named Mrs. Grimm and Eduardo, the Latin American greengrocer and florist.
A 32-year-old vegetable vendor, Mr. Yu said he had made it all the way to the border before he was caught by the Mexican authorities in a town whose name he could not recall.
The family's lawyer told Mr. O'Shaughnessy he could help by writing a letter on behalf of his friendly fruit vendor; Mr. Alam could be released, if deemed a person of sound character, while his case made its way through the system.
It will continue to advise clients to buy systems from all vendors, says Mr Hurd, but those clients are now likely to pay more attention when the boxes come from HP.Nonetheless, the deal marks another step in HP's impressive comeback.
But after years of mergers - and after seeing union workers like him fired, only to be replaced with lower-cost vendors - Mr Pacheco is wary of what's to come.
