[Hatfield]

I worked at the Q for about 10 years, and here are my insights FWIW:

1. Through my grapevine I heard that the Portland office was closing. This was announced internally last week.

2) I have not heard anything about a massive layoff. That doesn’t mean it is or isn’t going to happen. In the old days, before the company divisionalized, news from one division traveled a lot faster to other divions, because managers typically had direct reports working in other divisions. When the company was split up into divisions many years ago, that ended this cross-pollination and news travels a lot slower now. So if you have a friend who’s a VP in Division X, there’s a pretty good chance he has no idea what’s about to happen in Division Y until it actually happens.

3) As someone already noted, Qualcomm is like any other company in that, in tough times they need to control costs just like anyone else. The vast majority of QCOM’s revenue is driven by handset sales, and handset turnover time has increased greatly in the past year. With the iPhone (not a Qualcomm product) being a notable exception, people are waiting longer and longer to replace aging handsets. As the economy continues to worsen, these upgrade cycles are going to continue to lengthen.

4) QCOM’s days of explosive growth have been over for a long time. The company has matured into a solid performer with strong revenue, but they are now selling into a fairly saturated market, and they have more adversaries than allies, especially in Europe. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if European regulatory agencies managed to lock QCOM out of Euro 4G standards, similar to what happened in 2G with IS-95 CDMA essentially being outlawed in Europe in favor of GSM.

I’ve had doubts about their earnings growth potential for a long time. They’re pretty much in turn-the-crank-and-collect-the-royalties mode, but I don’t see what their next act will be when this gravy train eventually grinds to a halt.

[Hatfield]

I worked at the Q for about 10 years, and here are my insights FWIW:

1. Through my grapevine I heard that the Portland office was closing. This was announced internally last week.

2) I have not heard anything about a massive layoff. That doesn’t mean it is or isn’t going to happen. In the old days, before the company divisionalized, news from one division traveled a lot faster to other divions, because managers typically had direct reports working in other divisions. When the company was split up into divisions many years ago, that ended this cross-pollination and news travels a lot slower now. So if you have a friend who’s a VP in Division X, there’s a pretty good chance he has no idea what’s about to happen in Division Y until it actually happens.

3) As someone already noted, Qualcomm is like any other company in that, in tough times they need to control costs just like anyone else. The vast majority of QCOM’s revenue is driven by handset sales, and handset turnover time has increased greatly in the past year. With the iPhone (not a Qualcomm product) being a notable exception, people are waiting longer and longer to replace aging handsets. As the economy continues to worsen, these upgrade cycles are going to continue to lengthen.

4) QCOM’s days of explosive growth have been over for a long time. The company has matured into a solid performer with strong revenue, but they are now selling into a fairly saturated market, and they have more adversaries than allies, especially in Europe. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if European regulatory agencies managed to lock QCOM out of Euro 4G standards, similar to what happened in 2G with IS-95 CDMA essentially being outlawed in Europe in favor of GSM.

I’ve had doubts about their earnings growth potential for a long time. They’re pretty much in turn-the-crank-and-collect-the-royalties mode, but I don’t see what their next act will be when this gravy train eventually grinds to a halt.

[Hatfield]

I worked at the Q for about 10 years, and here are my insights FWIW:

1. Through my grapevine I heard that the Portland office was closing. This was announced internally last week.

2) I have not heard anything about a massive layoff. That doesn’t mean it is or isn’t going to happen. In the old days, before the company divisionalized, news from one division traveled a lot faster to other divions, because managers typically had direct reports working in other divisions. When the company was split up into divisions many years ago, that ended this cross-pollination and news travels a lot slower now. So if you have a friend who’s a VP in Division X, there’s a pretty good chance he has no idea what’s about to happen in Division Y until it actually happens.

3) As someone already noted, Qualcomm is like any other company in that, in tough times they need to control costs just like anyone else. The vast majority of QCOM’s revenue is driven by handset sales, and handset turnover time has increased greatly in the past year. With the iPhone (not a Qualcomm product) being a notable exception, people are waiting longer and longer to replace aging handsets. As the economy continues to worsen, these upgrade cycles are going to continue to lengthen.

4) QCOM’s days of explosive growth have been over for a long time. The company has matured into a solid performer with strong revenue, but they are now selling into a fairly saturated market, and they have more adversaries than allies, especially in Europe. I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if European regulatory agencies managed to lock QCOM out of Euro 4G standards, similar to what happened in 2G with IS-95 CDMA essentially being outlawed in Europe in favor of GSM.

I’ve had doubts about their earnings growth potential for a long time. They’re pretty much in turn-the-crank-and-collect-the-royalties mode, but I don’t see what their next act will be when this gravy train eventually grinds to a halt.

[Hatfield]

>I pay hundreds of thousands in taxes each year.
>I have never bought a home, because I didn’t
>think I could afford a decent one and, at the
>same time, save enough for my future retirement
>and health expenses.

Sorry, but this is when my “Jackass” alarm went off.

[Hatfield]

>I pay hundreds of thousands in taxes each year.
>I have never bought a home, because I didn’t
>think I could afford a decent one and, at the
>same time, save enough for my future retirement
>and health expenses.

Sorry, but this is when my “Jackass” alarm went off.

[Hatfield]

>I pay hundreds of thousands in taxes each year.
>I have never bought a home, because I didn’t
>think I could afford a decent one and, at the
>same time, save enough for my future retirement
>and health expenses.

Sorry, but this is when my “Jackass” alarm went off.

[Hatfield]

>I pay hundreds of thousands in taxes each year.
>I have never bought a home, because I didn’t
>think I could afford a decent one and, at the
>same time, save enough for my future retirement
>and health expenses.

Sorry, but this is when my “Jackass” alarm went off.

[Hatfield]

>I pay hundreds of thousands in taxes each year.
>I have never bought a home, because I didn’t
>think I could afford a decent one and, at the
>same time, save enough for my future retirement
>and health expenses.

Sorry, but this is when my “Jackass” alarm went off.

[Hatfield]

John,

I’m pretty sure copying the whole C drive does not buy you much, except maybe some convenience. If the machine’s C drive fails and you replace the drive, you can’t just drag everything back and have Windows start working. Windows hides a bunch of files in places that dragging and dropping won’t save.

Norton Ghost can make an “image” of the entire C drive, and you can put that saved image on a backup drive. Now if the main drive fails, you can buy a new drive, install it, and boot Ghost off the CD drive and restore your backed up image onto the new replacement drive. The machine will be restored as if nothing ever happened… assuming that Ghost can read the image file. I got burned once because it couldn’t.

But the other thing to keep in mind is that over time, Windows machines get polluted with “registry turds” which slow the machines down. The Registry is probably the single worst-implemented thing in Windows. It slowly gets corrupted over time, and there’s really no good way to repair it. Once your machine is more than a few years old, a complete reinstall is maybe not such a bad thing.

Having been around this block several times, I think I’ve convinced myself that the best course of action is to be more disciplined about where you keep your personal data. I keep virtually all of my files in the My Documents tree. This makes it easy to back up, and I back that up religiously. (Now that I’m using SyncToy to automate this process, there’s a few other folders I save also.)

If my HD dies, I still have to re-install Windows and my applications. True, this is a pain in the ass, but at least when I’m done I get to start over with a fresh install and a clean Windows registry. Or if I end up deciding to buy a new PC, I just reinstall my apps.

The final step is to restore the My Documents tree and that’s just a drag-and-drop.

Just my $0.02 on the matter,

Dave

[Hatfield]

John,

I’m pretty sure copying the whole C drive does not buy you much, except maybe some convenience. If the machine’s C drive fails and you replace the drive, you can’t just drag everything back and have Windows start working. Windows hides a bunch of files in places that dragging and dropping won’t save.

Norton Ghost can make an “image” of the entire C drive, and you can put that saved image on a backup drive. Now if the main drive fails, you can buy a new drive, install it, and boot Ghost off the CD drive and restore your backed up image onto the new replacement drive. The machine will be restored as if nothing ever happened… assuming that Ghost can read the image file. I got burned once because it couldn’t.

But the other thing to keep in mind is that over time, Windows machines get polluted with “registry turds” which slow the machines down. The Registry is probably the single worst-implemented thing in Windows. It slowly gets corrupted over time, and there’s really no good way to repair it. Once your machine is more than a few years old, a complete reinstall is maybe not such a bad thing.

Having been around this block several times, I think I’ve convinced myself that the best course of action is to be more disciplined about where you keep your personal data. I keep virtually all of my files in the My Documents tree. This makes it easy to back up, and I back that up religiously. (Now that I’m using SyncToy to automate this process, there’s a few other folders I save also.)

If my HD dies, I still have to re-install Windows and my applications. True, this is a pain in the ass, but at least when I’m done I get to start over with a fresh install and a clean Windows registry. Or if I end up deciding to buy a new PC, I just reinstall my apps.

The final step is to restore the My Documents tree and that’s just a drag-and-drop.

Just my $0.02 on the matter,

Dave

[Hatfield]

John,

I’m pretty sure copying the whole C drive does not buy you much, except maybe some convenience. If the machine’s C drive fails and you replace the drive, you can’t just drag everything back and have Windows start working. Windows hides a bunch of files in places that dragging and dropping won’t save.

Norton Ghost can make an “image” of the entire C drive, and you can put that saved image on a backup drive. Now if the main drive fails, you can buy a new drive, install it, and boot Ghost off the CD drive and restore your backed up image onto the new replacement drive. The machine will be restored as if nothing ever happened… assuming that Ghost can read the image file. I got burned once because it couldn’t.

But the other thing to keep in mind is that over time, Windows machines get polluted with “registry turds” which slow the machines down. The Registry is probably the single worst-implemented thing in Windows. It slowly gets corrupted over time, and there’s really no good way to repair it. Once your machine is more than a few years old, a complete reinstall is maybe not such a bad thing.

Having been around this block several times, I think I’ve convinced myself that the best course of action is to be more disciplined about where you keep your personal data. I keep virtually all of my files in the My Documents tree. This makes it easy to back up, and I back that up religiously. (Now that I’m using SyncToy to automate this process, there’s a few other folders I save also.)

If my HD dies, I still have to re-install Windows and my applications. True, this is a pain in the ass, but at least when I’m done I get to start over with a fresh install and a clean Windows registry. Or if I end up deciding to buy a new PC, I just reinstall my apps.

The final step is to restore the My Documents tree and that’s just a drag-and-drop.

Just my $0.02 on the matter,

Dave

[Hatfield]

John,

I’m pretty sure copying the whole C drive does not buy you much, except maybe some convenience. If the machine’s C drive fails and you replace the drive, you can’t just drag everything back and have Windows start working. Windows hides a bunch of files in places that dragging and dropping won’t save.

Norton Ghost can make an “image” of the entire C drive, and you can put that saved image on a backup drive. Now if the main drive fails, you can buy a new drive, install it, and boot Ghost off the CD drive and restore your backed up image onto the new replacement drive. The machine will be restored as if nothing ever happened… assuming that Ghost can read the image file. I got burned once because it couldn’t.

But the other thing to keep in mind is that over time, Windows machines get polluted with “registry turds” which slow the machines down. The Registry is probably the single worst-implemented thing in Windows. It slowly gets corrupted over time, and there’s really no good way to repair it. Once your machine is more than a few years old, a complete reinstall is maybe not such a bad thing.

Having been around this block several times, I think I’ve convinced myself that the best course of action is to be more disciplined about where you keep your personal data. I keep virtually all of my files in the My Documents tree. This makes it easy to back up, and I back that up religiously. (Now that I’m using SyncToy to automate this process, there’s a few other folders I save also.)

If my HD dies, I still have to re-install Windows and my applications. True, this is a pain in the ass, but at least when I’m done I get to start over with a fresh install and a clean Windows registry. Or if I end up deciding to buy a new PC, I just reinstall my apps.

The final step is to restore the My Documents tree and that’s just a drag-and-drop.

Just my $0.02 on the matter,

Dave

[Hatfield]

John,

I’m pretty sure copying the whole C drive does not buy you much, except maybe some convenience. If the machine’s C drive fails and you replace the drive, you can’t just drag everything back and have Windows start working. Windows hides a bunch of files in places that dragging and dropping won’t save.

Norton Ghost can make an “image” of the entire C drive, and you can put that saved image on a backup drive. Now if the main drive fails, you can buy a new drive, install it, and boot Ghost off the CD drive and restore your backed up image onto the new replacement drive. The machine will be restored as if nothing ever happened… assuming that Ghost can read the image file. I got burned once because it couldn’t.

But the other thing to keep in mind is that over time, Windows machines get polluted with “registry turds” which slow the machines down. The Registry is probably the single worst-implemented thing in Windows. It slowly gets corrupted over time, and there’s really no good way to repair it. Once your machine is more than a few years old, a complete reinstall is maybe not such a bad thing.

Having been around this block several times, I think I’ve convinced myself that the best course of action is to be more disciplined about where you keep your personal data. I keep virtually all of my files in the My Documents tree. This makes it easy to back up, and I back that up religiously. (Now that I’m using SyncToy to automate this process, there’s a few other folders I save also.)

If my HD dies, I still have to re-install Windows and my applications. True, this is a pain in the ass, but at least when I’m done I get to start over with a fresh install and a clean Windows registry. Or if I end up deciding to buy a new PC, I just reinstall my apps.

The final step is to restore the My Documents tree and that’s just a drag-and-drop.

Just my $0.02 on the matter,

Dave

[Hatfield]

> your data is scattered in some proprietary format

This is a really good point. I had been using Ghost, and Ghost was unable to recover my data. I will never again use a backup system that stores the data in a proprietary format. I don’t even care about compression. Disk space is cheap. That’s one of the nice things about SyncToy, the files are stored in their regular format. I can plug the external HD into any computer and read my files.

BTW, I also have a Mac, so I let Time Machine backup that machine. Since I’m still new to the Mac and don’t fully trust Time Machine yet, I have my Mac files mounted over the network by the PC, so those files also get backed up with SyncToy in addition to Time Machine. Can never be too safe!

[Hatfield]

> your data is scattered in some proprietary format

This is a really good point. I had been using Ghost, and Ghost was unable to recover my data. I will never again use a backup system that stores the data in a proprietary format. I don’t even care about compression. Disk space is cheap. That’s one of the nice things about SyncToy, the files are stored in their regular format. I can plug the external HD into any computer and read my files.

BTW, I also have a Mac, so I let Time Machine backup that machine. Since I’m still new to the Mac and don’t fully trust Time Machine yet, I have my Mac files mounted over the network by the PC, so those files also get backed up with SyncToy in addition to Time Machine. Can never be too safe!

[Author]

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