Greg asks:

> Assuming a Friday night arrival, and that the conference schedule will keep
>  me pretty busy until Thursday at noon (or will it? since this is my first
HP
>  World, I don't know what to expect), do I need a car during the conference?

In general, what you do with your rental car at one of these conferences is
drive it from the airport to the hotel's parking garage -- and then at the
end of the conference, you drive it back to the airport, spending perhaps 30
minutes in total in the car (depending on how lost you get). Otherwise, you
tend to never think about it or move it again until you're ready to leave.

But, because you paid for a full tank of gas in advance, you feel enormously
foolish on the drive back to the airport for not using more than a few
teaspoons of gasoline during your entire tenure at the meeting. But worse
yet, thinking about it further, you feel even more foolish when you realize
that the hotel's daily parking charges rivaled what you were paying the
rental company for the car itself.

All told, renting the car for the week generally turns out to be the most 30
minutes you've ever spent in a car.

Wirt Atmar