Jerry Fochtman writes:

>FYI... its been almost 24 hours since the announcement
>and when I came in this morning all my HPe3000 production,
>development and test systems (for which there are many!)
>are still cranking away doing their job!

And the almost 15-year-old Micro XE that runs our accounting systems also
seems unaffected by yesterday's announcement. (That's a Classic HP 3000,
for newcomers.)

Seriously, the biggest problem that some of us may face is dealing with
management's box envy. You have to teach them that it's not a computer,
it's an application. The practice of double-entry bookkeeping really
hasn't changed all that much in the last 350 years or so, and that's what
our 15-year-old computer deals with.

We do take precautions. After all, a computer at age 15 is something like
120 years old in people years. So I copy the accounting data to another
computer once a week as flat files. But that's just because I'm
conservative. I mean, heck, when I get to be 120 years old, I'll probably
even switch my newspaper billing from semi-annual to month-to-month.

-- Bruce

PS.  I should note, however, that the 24-year-old terminal that's
attached to the MicroXE as a system console seems to have a failing
capacitor in its power supply that was just fine before the press
release. So I wouldn't be *too* sanguine.

- B


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Bruce Toback    Tel: (602) 996-8601| My candle burns at both ends;
OPT, Inc.            (800) 858-4507| It will not last the night;
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