Hello once again HP3000-L: I was a frequent contributor 4 quite a few years, but it's been some time since I posted anything to 3000-L. But now it's time to say sayonara: After over 20 years of running our entire shop production on HP 3000 platforms, we completed internal migration of our IMAGE-Transact client-server system from our trusty 959KS-400 to Microsoft Windows Server and SQL-Server back in September 2005. There were a number of ''speed bumps'' here and there on the road to SQL-Server, but overall I believe it's fair to say that we were fully successful (I can't claim much of the credit; that goes to the C++, C#, .NET, and SQL experts on our team). Our production system is now running SQL-2005, C#, and .NET 2.0 on DELL servers; with a smattering of Java Script, HTML, and etcetera on the client side. While there continue to be the occasional and usual ''surprises'' from Microsoft (especially as I recall in moving from one version of .NET to another), up-time and performance have been good; certainly ''good enough'' (no empirical data; just our general consensus). . . . Oh, yeah: When we turned off our 959, HP totally dropped out of the picture at our site (other than HP LJ printers). SIDEBAR: Just for grins the other day, after our 959KS-400 was powered down in December 2005 and not restarted for 18 months, I fired it up a few days ago. Darned if it AND all those old discs didn't all come up O.K. Too bad it will never be used again. OBSERVATION: Was in COSTCO last weekend: Saw they had the 750 GB Seagate FreeAgent Pro 7200.10 external drive with USB 2.0, dual Firewire, eSATA-3.0, on-board software, and a 5-year warantee for $249 with coupon. Considering HD Movies take a lot of GB; and that even music CDs can chew up 400+ MB if U load them ''lossless'' into Windows Media Player on Vista; what the heck: I splurged. Afterwards it crossed my mind that on that tiny little drive that U can hold in your hand U can store over 1850 times as much as we could put on the old 404 MB HP 7933 ''washing machines''. Considering the FreeAgent Pro unit (excluding base) fits in a volume approximately one-half of 1 percent the size of the old 7933, that means data density from the point of view of the overall external package has increased by something on the order of 370,000 times. . . . . Even though that's over a period of 20+ years, I still find that fact reasonably amazing. . . . . Not to mention the drop in cost-per-GB: At $0.33 per GB 4 FreeAgent Pro, ya gotta wonder how much cheaper consumer stand-alone storage can get in the next 10 years or so. FINALLY: After 30 years as a Federalli systems and software engineer, I'm retiring this Friday 29 June; followed by an escape to Okanogan County (the best of the Old West in WA (but with multiple high-speed ISPs) ). Keeping my TurboIMAGE and a few other MPE manuals for old time's sake, but the cold objective reality is that chances I will ever seriously work on an HP 3000 for the rest of my life are I expect pretty slim. THEREFORE: Even after retirement my next 10 years appear to be fairly fully booked already. Sooo. . . : Needing to do triage somewhere, at the end of this week I will be UNSUBSCRIBING from 3000-L. If anyone on the list should 4 whatever reason want to contact me in the future, much of the time I should be findable at or thru: ken-AT-kensletten-DOT-com 509dash429dash8280 Box 902 Winthrop, WA 98862-0902 OFF-TOPIC FOOTNOTE: Over the last few years I recall that several people expressed potential interest in joining a Colorado River float trip thru the Grand Canyon.... Unfortunately I can't find a good list of who that was anymore. So FWIW: My private permit does not come up until September 2009, but (probably) in September 2008 I am planning to try and put together what amounts to a private float trip with one of the commerical outfitters that run the Grand Canyon. . . Figure a test run to see if I'm still up to rowing it myself might not be a bad idea. No guarantees on schedule or available seats yet, but I will be trying to start to put a trip together in the next few months. Cheers, Ken Sletten Former SIGRAPID Chair, Former SIGIMAGE Chair, Former HP e3000 user. * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, * * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *