It is always interesting to watch a stock price jump 10 percent on news that the company's CEO has resigned. Although the headlines will use the word "resign" it is clear that Hewlett Packard (HPQ) chief executive Carly Fiorina was forced out after she orchestrated a horrendous Compaq acquisition.

Maybe now Hewlett will do what they should have done long ago; spin off their crown jewel printing business. Rather than focus on higher margin products (such as plastic containers of ink that sell for $30), Fiorina opted to add scale by gobbling up Compaq, forming (at the time) the largest personal computer maker in the world. The only problem was that with razor thin margins, tech companies were trying to flee that business, and for good reason.

Fiorina thought she could get bigger, take market share, and make money selling computers through various channels such as retail outlets and large tech distributors. As she would find out later, there was a reason why no other company had been able to accomplish that feat. Dell (DELL) continued to take market share as players in the PC market diminished. Gateway bought eMachines, IBM sold its PC biz to Lenovo, Packard Bell disappeared.

So, what should HP focus on now? How about the printer business? Hewlett's printing division accounted for 90 percent of HPQ's operating income in fiscal 2004. Using Lexmark (LXK) as a guide, the unit as a stand-alone company would be worth two-thirds of HPQ's current market value, despite only representing a third of total sales. With shareholder value unlocked, the new CEO would focus on the rest of the company's operations and hopefully find a way to be a profitable number two player behind Dell in personal computers, servers, and storage.

It won't be easy, but with Carly gone, the transformation that should have been attempted years ago can finally get started, if the board chooses to go in that direction.