My point is that I wouldn't invest many dollars in a mission critical
project based on my ability to get a newly merged HP-Compaq (in turmoil) to
honor such a guarantee in court.  All of us rely mostly on representations
made by a "trustworthy" vendor or its representatives  --  much of which is
based on verbal public announcements.  Anyone remember a certain vendor
making representations in August of last year about the HP3000/MPE?  Seems
to me that could be construed as a verbal contract.  How many customers
made plans based on that between August and November 14?  I know, obviously
not enough.

Vendor business plans can change (obviously) and verbal or written
agreements are only as good as your ability to enforce them in court, if
you can afford the time and money to do so.

Just imagine, your SAN goes down and your users are screaming and HP-Compaq
says: "Sorry that product is obsolete now."  So you say to your
users: "Don't worry, we will be back up just as soon as the court makes our
new vendor honor this written guarantee that I have from the old vendor
before they were bought."

I wouldn't want to get into that potential position in the first place.

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *