I find the words of the press release issued in response to this, quite amazing: "We are disappointed by the Packard Foundation's preliminary decision. Nevertheless, our responsibility to shareowners, customers and employees requires that we maintain a pragmatic view of the business and a focus on the future. Our firm commitment to this merger stems from our conviction that it will deliver the industry leadership and earnings growth our shareowners expect and our employees deserve." If they were really concerned about responsibility to shareowners, customers and employees, they would have canned the deal already. From the Compaq side the customers will face a slow death of their favourite technologies, the employees face massive redundancies, and the shareholders have watched their investments get wiped out. It can't look much better from the HP side of the fence either, with big redundancies in the PC and handheld divisions a real possibility, and years of corporate indigestion to follow from swallowing the Compaq elephant. When Compaq took over Digital, the grand announcement was that the two would compine to create a company that could generate $50 billion in revenue. What history had shown us is that in mergers like this, the two end up being much less than the sum of their parts. I think the Hewlett and Packard foundations have judged this right. This deal should go the way of the Dodo. John * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *