Hewlett Packard

Federal Contracts Report is a weekly summary of selected contracts recently awarded by the federal government to companies and other vendors in Maryland.* Martin Marietta Corp. in Baltimore won an $877,744 contract from the Navy for low frequency acoustic projectors and associated material technologies.* Hewlett Packard Co. in Rockville won an unspecified contract from the Defense Nuclear Agency to provide waveform recorders.* Metraplex Corp. in Frederick won a $675,640 contract from theNavy to provide data relay systems.

Baltimore is among six finalists competing for a grant to help push the city into the digital age. Under Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Digital Village program, a total of up to $15 million in money and equipment will be awarded to underprivileged neighborhoods in three cities. The program will help students in school, and adults and children who use the Internet in neighborhood centers and at home. The Maryland Center for Arts and Technology Inc., an economic development organization in Baltimore, applied for the Hewlett-Packard grant for the East Baltimore empowerment zone.

SAN FRANCISCO - Walter B. Hewlett, who has fought bitterly to keep the company his father helped create from merging with Compaq Computer Corp., took his fight to court yesterday in an effort to block the deal that Hewlett-Packard Co. says it has won. In papers filed in Delaware Chancery Court, Hewlett claims that Hewlett-Packard's managers used corporate assets to "entice and coerce" a large institutional shareholder into switching its votes in favor...

WILMINGTON, Del. - Hewlett-Packard Co. asked a judge to absolve Chief Executive Officer Carleton S. "Carly" Fiorina and Chief Financial Officer Robert P. Wayman of wrongdoing in gathering votes for an $18.3 billion bid for Compaq Computer Corp. Former Director Walter B. Hewlett, who opposes the acquisition, sued the company March 28, saying executives coerced Deutsche Bank AG to switch at least 17 million votes in favor of the purchase. He also claims Fiorina and her deputies misled investors about the potential benefits of the buyout.

After today's blackboard lesson teaching words that rhyme, the young children at The Door community center in East Baltimore will spend a few moments each playing educational games on computers. "They do stuff that is fun but they don't realize they are actually learning because they are having so much fun," said Jim Woods, a minister who is chief operating officer of the faith-based program. "It's good for us because we have successfully tied learning to technology." That's exactly what the folks at Hewlett-Packard Co., the California-based computer maker that provided The Door with 15 computers, want to hear.

Dell Computer Corp. continues to lead the PC industry in customer service, while Hewlett-Packard Co. can't seem to make up any ground, according to poll results to be released today. Dell, based in Round Rock, Texas, along with Apple Computer Inc., got high marks by shipping products that work right out of the box, according to PC Magazine's annual customer satisfaction survey. "If you don't need support as often, if you don't need repairs, then you're going to be more satisfied," said Ben Gottesman, executive editor of the magazine, which will publish its findings in the July 22 issue.

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Hewlett-Packard Co.'s management team will keep their jobs, except for Chairman and Chief Executive Carleton S. "Carly" Fiorina, if the $22.2 billion acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. isn't approved, dissident director Walter B. Hewlett said yesterday. "All of the senior team will stay; they are all valuable," Hewlett said during a conference call with investors and analysts. "If the merger is defeated, I don't think [Fiorina] will have the credibility to lead this company."

Expectations were high when Hewlett-Packard Co. hired Carleton S. "Carly" Fiorina in July 1999 to be its chief executive officer, making her one of only four women running Fortune 500 companies and the first to head a Dow 30 company. The former Lucent Technologies Inc. executive and one-time philosophy major was brought in to prepare the highly bureaucratic high-tech giant to do battle in the fast-moving Internet economy. The 46-year-old's timing couldn't have been worse. Fiorina took over just as the economy was beginning to slow and businesses were scaling back on technology spending.

CARLY GOT the votes. Walter got the cheers. Hewlett-Packard heir Walter B. Hewlett, who apparently failed last week to torpedo the company's merger with Compaq, overcame his expensive gray suit to wax wiry and nerdy at the shareholders meeting. He hasn't written any printer-driver software lately, but no matter. A Fred MacMurray haircut, his dad's DNA and glasses that would have been safety-compliant in an HP machine shop made Hewlett the proxy geek and patriarch. His brief thanks to people who voted against the Compaq deal prompted a standing ovation from employees and shareholders.

NEW YORK -- U.S. stocks were mixed yesterday as concern about earnings buffeted another big computer maker, Hewlett-Packard Co., and a report on housing starts prompted questions about the strength of the economic recovery.Computer-driven buy orders fueled a late rally that pushed the Dow Jones industrial average higher. The Dow industrials closed at a session high of 3,511.65, up 19.65. The computer-driven trading was tied to Friday's "triple-witching hour," when options and futures on stock indexes expire, traders said.