Rahul Sood is a tool and should have see this coming. It's quite a shame though as the Envy 133 is a really nice machine. Once HP bought the Voodoo line it was dead from the start, I mean seriously did anyone see this coming?

edit: herothezero did.

Have you guys not seen the Voodoo Envy?!

http://www.voodoopc.com/#/productsenvy

The Techgage article is pure speculation and fails at understanding the layoff situation. When HP bought EDS they nearly doubled their employee base (to 360,000) while increasing revenue only 10%. Call that "unsustainable".

The announced layoffs are to address the duplication in Services, Sales, and G&A created by the EDS acquisition.

Techgage seems to think HP is run like a local deli. Big companies don't kill brands as part of a layoff strategy. Branding strategies drive the business model, and staffing levels adjust accordingly.

I've spoken with the founder of Voodoo PC - Rahul Sood - in an interview I did for another podcast a while back. Voodoo is NOT being shut down. They're becoming more the high end gaming innovator for the HP brand and - as he put it - benefiting immensely from HP's R&D budget and distribution resources.

The PSU return for the Omen is complete hogwash - the reason they have 'low sales' is that you can't buy their desktop - it's so expensive and exclusive that you have to get an invitation to buy one. Even with that kind of exclusivity - he said they can't make them fast enough.

HP's Blackbird computer is an example of how the Voodoo/HP relationship is supposed to work. HP provides massive amounts of supply resources - manufacturing power - and even their impressive R&D budget (one of the largest R&D budgets for any computer retailer in the world) and Voodoo brings their own touch of design genius, extreme hardware experience - and calls it - HP with Voodoo DNA.

Overpriced junk that doesn't do anything better than I can build myself.
Who did they plan on selling these to, illegal aliens that mow lawns?
Good riddance they won't be missed.

Anyone get the idea that Rahul Sood is, like, a raving HP fanboy that believes any and every decision that HP makes with respect to his former company is always an infallibly good thing, when HP really doesn't care and is looking to milk the Voodoo brand name for all that it's worth?

...

...at least, that's how I see it. I always read his enthusiastic blog posts and he's like, "HP is redirecting it's focus in a manner that will expedite Voodoo products getting to you!" And all I can think is, "Uhh... no, they're cutting funding to you, and looking to kill your company because they know everything you already do, and just want your brand name."

The idea that Voodoo PC ever specialized in anything is pretty stupid in and of itself. People seriously think that HP needed Voodoo's "expertise" in building a gaming PC? Really? Because if so, that's retarded. HP has millions of dollars with which to spend on research and development that doesn't need to actually take place, given the wealth of review sites out there. So, HP could get a good start by paying a group of engineers to hunt around there, and then the engineers could probably order a few parts off of Newegg and do some in-house testing to determine what the best configuration for a gaming PC would be, in terms of balancing user experience with performance, price, power consumption, noise, etc.

That is way. The hell. Cheaper. THAN BUYING ANOTHER COMPANY.

Voodoo never even made particularly good gaming PC's... they made pretty PC's that had high performance parts, but even those weren't really selected for one feature or another. Their notebooks were nothing more than Clevo/Uniwill/Quanta chassis with car paint. And there's nothing wrong with that, but just because you can charge $5,000 for a sweet-looking, glossy red Clevo M1234 laptop doesn't make it faster, and doesn't give you special insight as to "how to make a gaming PC."

Come on, Rahul. Abandon ship. Rebel. Save your company's name.

HP owns a brand name; there's nothing spectacular about the VoodooPC corporate process that makes their leadership worth keeping.

HP doesn't really need the Voodoo name. Even if they didn't sell a lot of them, the HP Blackbird could be what prompted them to drop the Voodoo brand since they can sell similar systems without having to call it a VoodooPC.

I never liked the idea of an ultrabux desktop but they had some very cool notebook designs. Voodoo may just become rebadged HPs, that would be too bad. It's a stretch to conclude that Voodoo will be killed off based upon a general layoff notice, although the PSU return isn't a good sign it could be an inventory management thing.

Surely, I wasn't the only one to see this coming? Not like low-volume products work for a company with HP's scale.

Oh well, what's one more thing to hate HP for?