Sood: Voodoo PC Could Have Changed HP for the Better

Microsoft executive Rahul Sood recently gave an interview in which he carefully expressed a certain frustration with HP's lost passion for taking care of its PC business.

Sood, of course, is the co-founder of boutique PC maker VoodooPC, which he sold to HP. He left HP earlier this year to join Microsoft as his once prestigious brand and ideas ended up in a dark corner of the vast spaces of HP.

Sood talked to Xbit Labs and indicated that HP may have simply worn him out and that there was no hope left that VoodooPC could turn into the vision the two companies may have had when they agreed to the acquisition.

"There were some good things to come out of the deal, no doubt, but we could have done so much more," Sood said.

He went a step further and compared the capabilities of VoodooPC+HP to Apple: "Had we been given more time I truly believe HP would have had a beautiful ecosystem of products that could stand up against Apple’s best offerings. If HP Voodoo was still alive and kicking you would have seen a different HP today."

It has been no secret that Sood does not believe that HP's decision to spin off its personal systems group is a good idea, but his criticism is certainly somewhat harsh.

"My guess is [that the HP CEO] sees challenges internally in PSG, he doesn’t fully understand how the hardware business operates, and he feels that hardware margins are far too slim to bother with. In my opinion hardware is the footprint that makes HP who they are. HP’s gigantic PC footprint is easily their biggest strength, not their software and services. If HP could leverage their biggest strength in a meaningful way they’d be almost unstoppable."