I quoted Joel Birnbaum, and editorialized a bit:

>(Right on all accounts, but...)
>
>   ...
>   As you know, we guessed right about where our customers
>   wanted to go....
>
>(Oops!)

the Bruce Toback writes:

> Is that really so far off base? What's the MPE market share, and if
> it's dropped since 1986, what boxes are people -- including HP 3000
> shops -- buying instead?

IIRC, customers wanted more interoperability, not scrapping
on machine in favour of another.

I'll come back to this, but first:

> That is, how many NT or (more recently) Linux boxes are
> in HP 3000 shops doing a job that could just as easily be done by a
> small- to medium-sized HP 3000?

That's a very different question from the first one.

In the first question, especially using the stated timeframe,
there was very much a perceived "forced migration" from the 3000
to HP-UX (or at least to *something* else).  Talking with management
about the 3000 at most sites resulted in them saying something along
the lines of, "HP's not going to support the 3000 soon, so we need to
find something else."

So yes, I'm pretty sure that the 3000's market share dropped
considerably since 1986, primarily because the 3000 shops themselves
were "inspired" by HP to move elsewhere.

Just as the U.S. has taken forever to recover from Jimmy Carter's
nationwide 55mph speed limit, I wonder when/if the 3000 market will
ever recover from HP's strong push away from that.


But help me with my history (it took me 5 tries to pass 2 history
classes in school):  When did NT and Linux appear?  I'm reasonably
sure neither was around in '86 or '87.  Heck, I bought a new 386SX/16
with 1MB of memory in 1988, so I'm pretty sure NT was not a product
then.

--Glenn