I always thought it was better to make a little money off a lot of people,
than it was to gouge a few unsuspecting chumps.  There is less of a chance
you will see them just before your demise, and more might show up at your
funeral.
With a reliable product, like the HP 3000, they should have been able to
support that ideal.
When you focus on helping people, you make money.  When you focus on making
money, you help people decide to get another vendor.

Guy Avenell
www.hptraderonline.com



----- Original Message -----
From: "James Clark Jr" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 3:44 PM
Subject: [HP3000-L] Real reason HP3000 is being dicontinued.


> I have read many of the comments and feel that the real reason that the
> HP3000 is being discontinued is that HP was unable to come up with a
market
> plan in which they made enough money with said product. I have listen over
> the years to many people who dealt with HP and how HP kept changing
things,
> like how to order, what to order, who to go through when ordering, etc.
> Now IBM has down to a science, big money for big machines, allow
customizing
> thus they are needed when next machine is brought in, emulate the old on
the
> new, only hand coded assembler was able to get the needed speed out of the
> machine, thus locking the code to their machine. Service, service, and
> service is where the money was at and the machines were reliable enough to
> get the job done but unreliable enough to justify hefty service contracts.
> All this worked great for multimillion dollar hardware, but enter PC's
they
> are too cheap to pay for service, just buy another PC. Their PC business
was
> in trouble for some time, don't know about now. Maybe they have it right
now
> for the PC with the Linux OS.
> But the HP3000 was so reliable that the finance people would ask "Why do
we
> need this service contract?" And as a IT manager, you would hope and pray
> something would go wrong to prove the contract was necessary. Sometimes it
> would but most of the time it would not. Managers are always looking for
> more money and what they can cut to get it. Now because of its reliability
> no one organization, even HP, knows who all are users of the machine.
> Companies upgrading gave old machines to schools, other companies,
friends,
> employees. Ha, my friend got one and he did not know what it was, but he
got
> it anyways.
> So given the above, and HP not being able to make enough money, it was
only
> a matter of time. Now the HP-UX, I have used it and it is nice, but it is
> full enough of uncertainty and wanted by enough managers, who don't know
> what they want, that it pays well for itself.
> For another proof, just look at Microsoft OS's, none of them reliable but
> through marketing we are told that each is better than the previous
version,
> so we pony up the bucks to get the next version to find that it too has
> bugs, only different ones. So unless someone can find a way for HP to make
> money with this reliable OS and machine then HP will not change their
minds.
>
>         James
>
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>

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