ReadWriteEnterprise

Remember when computers were cool and printers were boring peripherals? Well, these days there seems to be fewer and fewer differences between the two devices.

At least HP seems to think so. Reports are circulating today that the hardware giant plans to combine its not-all-that-profitable PC division (you know, the one the company's last CEO wanted to spin off) with its high-margin, market-leading printer operation.

It's no surprise that the new-and-re-improved Hewlett-Packard has come to the conclusion this afternoon, under newly-minted President and CEO Meg Whitman, that it will not spin off the Personal Systems Group (PSG) division responsible for producing PCs and tablets. This move was announced after the close of stock trading Thursday afternoon.

But one of the first questions analysts asked during an HP investors' press conference this afternoon was the fate of its tablet unit. Today, Whitman made it absolutely clear that any tablet PCs HP may produce in the coming year will center around Windows 8, not the webOS platform that HP acquired in the Palm buyout just over one year ago.

"Communications is at the heart of ecommerce and community. By combining the two leading ecommerce franchises, eBay and PayPal, with the leader in Internet voice communications," announced eBay's CEO in September 2005, Meg Whitman, "we will create an extraordinarily powerful environment for business on the Net."

By 2005, what Meg Whitman had learned about "ecosystems," such as they are, would have had to have come from her tenure as president of Stride Rite Shoes, the maker of Keds; and later as chief of Hasbro's Playskool division, where she directly oversaw the marketing of Mr. Potato Head. Inspired by the reintroduction of the toy brand into popular culture with Pixar's Toy Story, Whitman's innovations included the licensing of the brand to television, leading to the 1998 premiere of Fox Kids' "The Mr. Potato Head Show."