John,

Sir, you are not seeing my point.  In the WSJ article about Carly, they
mentioned another CEO that discontinued their food stores (sorry about
being vague, but I don't have the article here).  The reason for the
discontinuance was that they couldn't be the best in that verticle market.
In other words, it was closed even though it was making money.

Companies are like people.  They seem to have a personallity, sort of.  It
has nothing to do with HP being stupid.  If they want to get out of the
computer market, they will.  Even if it is still making money.  Its called
a change of direction.



At 05:32 PM 11/29/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>>Again, without seeing the actual costs, how do we know its unattractive?
>
>This was based on the (possibly faulty) assumption that HP isn't stupid.
>
>John
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ric Merz [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2001 2:02 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: IBM as an option
>
>
>At 09:26 AM 11/29/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>>Much of the speculation about possible futures for MPE seems to ignore the
>>fact that MPE is undoubtedly very hardware-specific in its design.  To port
>>it to a platform with a different architecture would be a huge effort.
>This
>
>Yes, in my mind, MPE w/o a 3000 doesn't compute.  Also, I believe that MPE
>is so stable because both parts are made by the same company.
>
>>is acknowledged in HP's decision to not port MPE to IA-64, which in turn is
>>probably a major factor in HP's decision to drop MPE.  Since HP is the only
>>manufacturer of PA-RISC, and the sales volume of MPE-based systems is
>>evidently insufficient to make a port an attractive investment, it seems
>
>Again, without seeing the actual costs, how do we know its unattractive?
>With all due respect, since HP wants to discontinue the 3000 line (again),
>they will tell us whatever they want to (spin).  It doesn't have to be a
>decision based on cost, maybe they just want to.
>
>>unlikely that IBM or other hardware manufacturers would be interested.  It
>>is even more unlikely given the fact that IBM undoubtedly tells its
>>customers that OS/400 is the best choice for that market segment.
>
>Well, if I was IBM, and I wanted to grab the HP user base (~40,000 -
>70,000), I would have a compatibility mode setup to first get them into my
>camp.  Then preach the AS/400 as an upgrade path.  BTW, isn't the AS/400
>O/S another of those darn proprietary operating systems?
>
>>
>>It seems to me that the most likely scenario for a post-HP life for MPE is
>snip
>>hardware sales revenue.  The open-source approach is certainly possible,
>but
>>at the expense of some of MPE's famous stability and reliability.
>
>Yes, again.  We would then have the Wintel problem.
>
>Ric
>[log in to unmask]
>
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