I was pulled from a deep sleep this morning by another reporter, from CBS Radio News, asking for lessons from the latest H-P lay-offs.

Since Mark Hurd left NCR to run the mess Carly Fiorina made of Hewlett-Packard in March, he has been fighting to turn the old boat around. The company turned in solid numbers in May, he hired away Dell's CIO, Randy Mott, and now he has the credibility with his board needed to prune the deadwood.

H-P has a lot of deadwood.

In buying Compaq, her signature move, Fiorina took on a lot of old, tired, even worthless brands, like DEC and Tandem. Compaq's latter-day strategy had been to buy these outfits for their book of business, and Fiorinia's deal was the apotheosis of this old-line industrial strategy. She insisted at the time there would only be a few survivors of the PC wars, and buying Compaq was the only way to make sure H-P would be one of them.

She was wrong. What works in steel does not work in tech. A book of business is worthless, because computers are short-term capital goods. It's not what you did for me, or even what you did for me lately, but what you're going to do for me tomorrow that counts.

But enough about the past.

The headlines on this move are the $1.9 billion in "savings" H-P expects in the next six quarters, but basically it's closing the books on its various pasts, and my guess is a lot of the cut-backs will take place in Houston, where a voluntary retirement plan and bigger 401 (k) contributions (which workers can take with them) are in the cards.

These aren't cruel cuts. They are intended to cut out some institutional memory, cut out some long-time employees who aren't pulling their weight in sales, and to make H-P ready for whatever strategy Mott and Hurd decide to pursue.

What might that be?

Based on some details in the lay-offs (like dumping the enterprise sales force Fiorina was so enamored of), H-P is going to concentrate on trying to match Dell's cost of production, and its distribution efforts. That won't be easy, but Hurd is an operations guy, he did the deed at NCR, he's got Dell's former number-two guy by his side, and if he can't do it (as the old football cheer goes) it's likely no one can.

Fiorina tried to make H-P too big to fail, but that principle doesn't apply in PCs. Hurd is biting the bullet and trying to play follow-the-leader, hoping the cost cutting and printer profits can cover-up what will take place beneath.

There's one more shoe to drop, however. I'm guessing that some time in the next 12-18 months Hurd will negotiate a manufacturing agreement, somewhat like the one Fiorina did on the iPod.

Can you say H-P Mac? I think you can.

That will make Apple into Hurd's lifeline, as it was for Fiorina. Not everything Carly did was stupid.