Its exact words were, "HP will consider a broad range of options that may include, among others, a full or partial separation of PSG from HP through a spin-off or other transaction." This major shift could actually be a very good thing both for HP and for consumers. If HP could refocus, it might be able to make great PCs again.

Why would HP want to get rid of the PSG group when it makes so many of the products that the public associates with the HP brand? Simply put, it doesn't make enough money. Enterprise servers and services deliver healthy profit margins. The printer business brings in big bucks, too. There's plenty of profit in selling ink for thousands of dollars a gallon, after all. HP's PC business, on the other hand, has been sagging. Part of the problem is the market, where sales of laptops and desktops have been soft due to a weak economy and stiff competition for your dollar from tablets and smartphones. Even so, most of HP's PC sales have been low-margin products. Simply put, HP wants to pull the same move IBM did when it to Lenovo more than 6 years ago.

This isn't necessarily a bad deal for consumers, though. After all, Lenovo has continued to produce and make good money at it. The HP situation is slightly different in that it sells a lot of consumer PCs, while IBM was focused on volume sales to businesses. A spun-off HP PC division could be just what the doctor ordered, as long as it commits to making a few serious changes. It boils down to three things: push the envelope, focus on design, and dump the low-cost junk.

I wrote recently about the inability for Windows-based laptop manufacturers to duplicate Apple's ability to . A new business built from the bricks of HP's PC division needs to have the willingness to be agile and insightful. It has to take risks on bringing the future of computing to the market, today. This might actually be a possibility. A new company wouldn't have all the bureaucracy and multiple layers of risk-adverse middle managers worried about their future in a company that is so much bigger than just PCs. Innovation tends to come from focused, autonomous groups that aren't burdened by an overabundance of MBAs armed with spreadsheets.

The new home of HP's PC business, be it a new company or an existing one, should focus on design, as opposed to making computers that do "everything for everyone." It should worry less about how to fit the mix-and-match parts from Chinese suppliers into a new case design and start engineering entire PCs with a focus on the future. Of course, it won't have the time and manpower to do that if it still insists on making a bunch of cheap PCs, which brings us to the third point...