Hello Friends:

As we learn more about the CSY commitment to IA-64, some customers might be
wondering what it means to their HP 3000 investment plans. It's important
to remember that even amid all the anticipation of faster HP 3000s, nothing
has yet been proven regarding IA-64 performance. Any news you hear about
IA-64 delivering  "peak performance at reduced cost" is simply flying out
in front of released facts.

Today we don't know what IA-64 3000 systems will cost -- and you can hunt
all day trying to find anybody at CSY who predicts these systems will be
less costly than the current HP 3000 top-end. that's where HP is likely to
introduce the systems, where performance is needed most. The performance
growth in the 3000 line still lies with PA-RISC for the forseeable future,
until IA-64 gets its bugs knocked out of it. More than a few analysts and
vendors we interviewed think IA-64 needs to generate another processor
other than Merced, too. Happily for many 3000 sites, those are problems the
HP-UX users are going to be working out.

The indisputable good news we reported Monday morning on our Web site is
that CSY is going to be using the architecture. That means the 3000 is in
the same company as NT or Unix solutions from HP. It's not going away, end
of story. The most important news is that CSY intends to work the same kind
of software miracle they did in 1987, when HP moved 3000 customers to RISC
without recompiles.

Now there's dynamic translation technology to help, a new tool to put on
top of the experience of the Spectrum migrations of the 80s. It's covered
in our Q&A with Winston Prather, head of the CSY labs. Paid subscribers can
read about it at the Always Online site
(http://www.3000newswire.com/newswire/subscribers). If you haven't seen our
summary IA-64 news story yet, anybody can read it at the FreeNews site at
http://www.3000newswire.com/newswire/newspage.html

Meanwhile, what this 64-bit tonic means to us at the NewsWire is part of
our updated Plan pages at  FreeNews:
http://www.3000newswire.com/newswire/planpage.html

At popular request we've dated the articles on the Plan pages to help our
FreeNews readers figure out what's historic and what's breaking analysis.
You can look over the set of articles to track the progress the 3000 has
made in just the three years that we've been publishing the NewsWire.

Ron Seybold, Editor In Chief
The 3000 NewsWire
Independent Information to Maximize Your HP 3000
[log in to unmask] http://www.3000newswire.com/newswire
512.331.0075