Jim Kramer writes:

> I'd like just one really good operating system rather than numerous mediocre
>  ones combined in a MISS-MORE-MOST mess.

If there was any point to my previous 2,501 "few words," Jim's comment is
precisely it.

I am very concerned that the HP3000 is going to become inordinately complex
over the next few years as it tries to be everything to everyone.

I truly do believe the real market opportunity for the HP3000 lies with the
personal mainframe, a box small enough and inexpensive enough that it can be
used in Main Street businesses, without a data processing staff per se in
attendance.

Every successful product line starts small and grows from there, Microsoft's
products being the premier examples among premier examples. Microsoft charges
you almost nothing to get started. It's only later when you add up all of the
costs do you realize how much you actually have spent over the last several
years.

Nonetheless, it's difficult for ordinary business people to make a large
initial investment when they know almost nothing about the various competing
products on the front side of a decision, most especially about their long-
term reliabilities.

The HP3000 currently sits in a well where it has an extraordinary competitive
advantage, unlike virtually every other computer system out there, large or
small. It has a 25 year history, a raft of well developed software and
software development techniques, yet it has an unblemished record of forward
compatibility and yet has enormous scalability. Those are characteristics that
no other system in existence can claim, and are very much the characteristics
that any business would be looking for when they have to make their first,
critical decisions.

Once a company becomes committed to a particular system, it's very difficult
to get them to move. Putting a significant number of "personal mainframe"
HP3000s out there -- in direct competition with NT boxes -- is much like
growing seed corn. It is a process that will multiply itself many times over.

But the boxes have to be small, simple, extraordinarily reliable, and
competitive in price in order to succeed. And they have to be capable of
being, easily understood, run and maintained by ordinary people, who speak and
write in English, not the gibberish associated with UNIX commands.

If I have any axe to grind in all of this, it is this one.

Wirt Atmar

PS: No one should take any offense at my MISS/MORE/MOST acronyms, most
especially those who have worked so hard on POSIX and the various ports.
Although I meant what I said, the acronyms were created to purposely emphasize
the points made, not to offend.