Hello Friends:

That's piling on as in American football. I'll try to keep this brief, and
hope that it might be important to HP 3000 customers.

It's good to see Wirt is willing to admit he may be ultimately wrong about
his Mac forecasts. I try to eschew the crystal ball stuff for computer
platforms. Seen too many turnarounds and unexpected crashes to guess what a
business will do, let alone an industry. I will say this: I don't believe
the resources are limited for Macs vs. PCs, or NT versus the 3000. I think
Gause's Exclusion Principle is based on something other than belief in
prosperity. Maybe humans are capable of more than animals or plants. We
should be given the opportunity to prove that it's so.

On MOST for the HP 3000: I was lucky to study some detailed technical specs
on the product in 1994. I was hired to write the white paper that would
introduce the concept to the customer base. The paper got finished, but the
product didn't. I'm out of NDA now, so I can tell what I know about a 3000
that could have run Unix and MPE -- but always MPE as the controlling
operating system. If  anybody cares, I'd be glad to wag my tongue. In that
era, offering Unix on a 3000 seemed the best way to save the platform --
i.e., keep people from being spooked about buying a computer which looked
like it had lost its favor with HP. Fortunately, the 3000 customers were
too stubborn to listen the HP brass with the favors, overselling Unix. All
of that brass is gone now, except for the CEO. That's a fellow who this
month said no one platform is going to be the ultimate one:

http://www.3000newswire.com/newswire/PlattSpeechFN.html

That's a philosophy you'd be well advised to follow -- no one platform is
going to muscle out others that are working. Wanna know what's working? As
Bruce Toback writes, ask somebody who's using the platform, whether it's a
Mac, a 3000, or NT. As a recent thread showed, even NT can produce people
who swear by it. The 3000, with its banners upon football fields dreamed up
with profound dedication by Wirt; or the Mac, with our ceaseless defense of
them; finds such disciples easily. Simplicity and elegance of design do
that. Such Mac simplicity has done this for us at the NewsWire: let us
coexist peacefully and exchange documents with a world that's 95 percent
full of non-Mac systems. Oh, and we get out a little newsletter on an
astonishingly small staff, too. Fast enough to post breaking news like the
above, hosted on an HP 3000 Web server.

There is one important thing I could add to Bruce's good advice. You should
ask whoever is testifying about their Expert Factor. If you can, get that
bit of information confirmed by somebody else. That's because the world of
computing is rife with people who will tell you something than be made to
run without reboots, updated easily, or migrated onto without real problem.
These can sometimes be people with vast IQs, decades of computing savvy, or
programmers clever enough to keep earning a living writing products for 25
years. Easy for them might not be so easy to you. Seeing a dog serve tea on
TV is indeed impressive. But unless it's *your* dog, you won't be lifting a
cup without getting out of your chair anytime soon.

Ron Seybold, Editor In Chief
The 3000 NewsWire
Independent Information to Maximize Your HP 3000
[log in to unmask] http://www.3000newswire.com/newswire
512.331.0075