Interesting Interex Fall 2002 e3000 customer needs survey
results at:

http://www.interex.org/advocacy/survey/e3ksurvey/results.html

While I suppose the response to this survey does not
qualify as a statisticly random sample of all current
e3000 customers, with 340 total responders IMO this data
is pretty significant and more than a little interesting.

A few comments:

Question # 2 results indicate 64.4 percent of responders
are either still gathering information on transitioning
(39.3 percent) or planning to stay on the hp e3000 (25.1).
In retrospect I would have worded that as "stay on MPE"
instead of "stay on 3000", but whatever...  anyway, then
in Question # 3 it sez:  "25.1 percent per above won't '
transition".  To me that seems like a worst-case (from
the Homesteading perspective) mis-reading of this stat:
i.e.:  Question # 3 seems to assume that 100 percent of
those currently still gathering info on transitioning
WILL end up moving off MPE.  At the very least seems like
that 39.3 percent "still gathering" should be divided up
in proportion to "decision split" so far;  i.e.:  25.1
percent are planning to stay on MPE and 35.6 percent are
planning / implementing / budgeted / completed transition.
Therefore divide the 39.3 percent "still gathering info"
as follows:

25.1 + 35.6 = 60.7    ...  then:
39.3 * 25.1 / 60.7 = 16.3
39.3 * 35.6 / 60.7 = 23.0

... then assuming 39.3 percent of sites still gathering
info eventually breaks down along same lines as those
who have already decided, we would have:

25.1 + 16.3 = 41.4 percent projected plan stay on MPE.
35.6 + 23.0 = 58.6 percent projected transition off MPE.

SIDEBAR:  The Interex survey didn't ask those who said
they are planning to stay on MPE how LONG they were
planning to stay.  Where most people will be 10+ years
from now is anybody's guess;  I interpreted "stay on MPE"
in the context of this Interex survey as meaning "beyond
the end of 2006".

Even if my above simple straight-line extrapolation is
not exactly correct statistically, IF the Question # 2
results are an accurate reflection of the MPE user base
then it seems reasonable to project that significantly
more MPE users plan to stay on MPE than HP was recently
touting.


Rest of the survey results are worth reviewing too...  I
thought the total dollars that just these 340 customers
were expecting to have to spend on transition costs was
especially interesting...

Ken Sletten