Hewlett Packard

The Hewlett-Packard Co.'s new Laserjet 4L personal laser printer, for DOS and Windows computers, is better and cheaper than its popular predecessor, the Laserjet IIP. At a suggested list price of $849, and a probable discounted price of $650, the 4L might be the laser that blasts dot-matrix printers into oblivion.Hewlett-Packard plans to deliver another version of the printer, called the Laserjet 4ML (list price $1,279, with a street price of about $999), for Macintosh computers and those PC users who use the powerful Adobe Postscript Level 2 software.

New-home construction declinesThe lowest mortgage rates in more than 20 years failed to energize homebuilding in July because of floods in the Midwest, military cuts in California and a lackluster economy in general.Builders began construction last month on new housing units at a 1.21 million seasonally adjusted annual rate, down 2.7 percent from June, the Commerce Department said yesterday. It was the fourth decline in seven months.Warner-Lambert may make drugsOfficials of Warner-Lambert Co. said it might be able to resume production of some nonprescription products within days, in the wake of its agreement with the Food and Drug Administration to suspend most manufacturing.

U.S. accuses Nymex chairmanFederal regulators have accused the chairman of the New York Mercantile Exchange and two others of commodity law violations. The New York Mercantile Exchange, or Nymex, is the world's biggest market for oil and gasoline futures.In an administrative complaint yesterday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused Z. Lou Guttman; his former partner, Harold Magid, and another man, Gary Glass, of Merrick, N.Y., of noncompetitive, prearranged trading in options on sugar futures.

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Hewlett-Packard Co.'s six outside directors said yesterday that Walter B. Hewlett has no meaningful plan for the computer maker's future if it drops the proposed acquisition of rival Compaq Computer Corp. for $20.9 billion. "All he continues to do is say `no' to the pending Compaq merger, but he offers nothing meaningful in its place," directors including Boeing Co.'s Chief Executive Officer Philip M. Condit and Barclays Global Investors' CEO Patricia C. Dunn said in a letter to shareholders.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- With pressure mounting over its troubled internal investigation of boardroom leaks, Hewlett-Packard is shifting into serious damage control. Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd, until recently out of the spotlight on the investigation, offered yesterday to testify before a congressional committee conducting an inquiry on the investigation. The offer came after a committee member suggested looking at whether Hurd should testify. In another part of HP's damage control, Hurd will hold a news conference today at the company's Palo Alto, Calif.

THE marriage of Hewlett-Packard Co. and Compaq Computer Corp. was this year's biggest proxy fight, an impassioned debate in which both pro- and anti-merger forces clocked overtime to woo the shareholders who decided the companies' fate. Too bad legions of the shareholders had no idea how they voted and were legally barred from finding out. Their stakes were voted for them - secretly - by Fidelity, Vanguard, T. Rowe Price and other mutual-fund companies whose supposed devotion to "shareholder rights" looks a little less pure in this light.

DALLAS -- If you have a business degree and wish it would earn you a Rolls-Royce, your taste in head-turning machines is passe. For a real status symbol, try sliding an HP out of your briefcase.HP is tech-talk for Hewlett-Packard calculators. And in the dress-for-success world of high finance, says Dallas CPA Warren Howell, HPs are as hip as red suspenders, Polo sunglasses, Mont Blanc pens and the Wall Street Journal."I know several people who just carry them around," Mr. Howell says. "They have to carry something because they can't add or subtract, so they carry an HP, because it looks more prestigious."

Michael Singleton, browsing in a cavernous Best Buy store on York Road in Lutherville yesterday, contemplated the news that one computer giant planned to buy another - and winced. "Man, that can't be good," the 20-year-old marketing student at Towson University said upon hearing that Hewlett-Packard Co. yesterday announced plans to buy Compaq Computer Corp. for stock valued at $20.3 billion. "Competition is always good, especially in this industry." The news that the company known as HP would join forces with Compaq startled the global computer industry, which has struggled through its worst year in the decade-plus that PCs have become a household commodity.

ONE REASON Microsoft's Windows CE operating system instantly became known as Wince was that using the first CE hand-held computers could be characterized as a form of abuse. After a session with the cramped keyboards and murky screens, your hands hurt and you worried about going blind.The latest, top-of-the-line CE machines cost more and work better. But they make you wonder whether your shirt pockets will burst at the seams, whether the batteries will last long enough and whether you will go mad trying to figure out some of the software.

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairwoman and Chief Executive Officer Carelton S. "Carly" Fiorina will have little time to celebrate now that the company has completed the $18.9 billion purchase of Compaq Computer Corp. after an eight-month struggle. The 47-year-old CEO lobbied skeptical investors, fought heirs of her company's founders and convinced a judge that she hadn't misled shareholders in her push to close the deal. Investors say all of that might look easy compared with what's next: stitching together the world's second- and third-largest computer makers.