Andrew - finally a question I might be able to help you with. I am the guy
who just shed his Classic and am trying to "come up to speed" on what
everyone else had done in the last 10 years ;-)

We just bought a 917LX and considered spending the $3K more for a 918LX.

Officially the end of support is the date you gave - but my CE told me that
there are so many out there that most likely they will keep supporting them.
My old Series 42 - support ended last year for most components after about
15 years.

I have in front of my HP's new contract proposal for our 917 - I have to
talk with the HP guy about adding/removing some things  - but for the 917LX
base SPU - they have no end date for support life. For our DTC16 controller,
they have 2/1/01 as the date support ends officially.

I'm still learning about MPE/ix but I believe that the performance
improvements of the 9x8 series over the 9x7 is only a fairly small margin -
although if different I'm sure there are enough people on this list with
charts to correct me ;-)

In any event the throughput of this thing continues to blow me away - I used
to do DBUNLOADS/LOADS on the 42 and was used to the process starting Friday
afternoon and going into Monday morning.

I tried it with the 917 and the process was less than 2 hours. Our night
job - which used to go till 3-8 in the morning is done in an hour. I heard
that the 917 was comparable to the 3000 Series 70.

If at the very worst HP drops support of the 917 there will be plenty of 3rd
party vendors willing to take up the slack I'm sure. For the price savings
over later models and the performance IMO the 9x7 is hard to beat...

Bill

From:    Andrew Cartledge - Listserve <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: By Bye HP9x7
>
> I there any official literature on the expected expiry on the HP9x7
> range.
>
> I am being told that this range will no longer be supported in the UK
> from about mid 2001, except the 937 which in the UK has a larger no if
> users. I have seen comments in the PowerPatch 1 release for v6 regarding
> other boxes but not the 9x7.
>
> Before I go out and scare people I know with these boxes, whilst at the
> same time trying to convince them there is a future with the HP, I would
> like to see some official word.
>
> Andrew Cartledge
>