> The open systems and PC software trends seem to point toward general > purpose operating software that does nearly everything more or less > acceptably, though perhaps not well. You can get specialized software to > work better in a specific domain, but with this model there is no > alternative for those who need "better" general purpose operating > systems. I think you answered your own question here. HPUX (or any Unix for that matter) is a swiss army knife, jack of all trades, etc. You can get HPUX to do just about anything, with a little bit of effort. It doesn't do any single thing exceptionally well, but it does just about anything you can imagine. MPE on the other hand does a few things exceptionally well, but it's not as general purpose like Unix. The fact there's desktop HPUX but not desktop MPE is also a very good clue as to what environments they are intended for. -Dan