Last week I got invited to an evening presentation that IBM was having in
my area, it was a small, invitation only event, about 30 people.  Dinner,
open bar and presentations.  They were talking about their work on the
Olympics, and I was struck that they were using just about every style of
machine in their stable.  As other's have mentioned, they talk about
solutions, not about specific machines mostly.

I was sitting and eating with 4 different people from IBM having very
interesting conversations, and they were jumping all over me for an
opportunity to be a partner for a new system we will be building for a
client, and odd's are they will get the business because they can supply
80-90% of what I need.  HP can supply about 60%, and doesn't seem to make
much effort to get involved in these types of projects.

Build a killer app, and sell it - no one cares what it's running on for the
most part, they want a solution.  IBM will dump machines at my doorstep in
24 hours (a slight exaggeration).  HP, I must track down their program
coordinator, write something up, pay them a fee, wait some more, maybe get
something, maybe not.  Not a lot of incentive for a developer.

I love the 3k, I wish to heck HP would make it just a teeny bit easier to
work with them.

Shawn