Alllan Chalmers writes: > For those of you with faith in HP's commitment to the 3000: > > Please tell me how many mentions of said computer you find in the annual > report. That is precisely the core of the problem. There are a great many people in HP who share the same degree of profound faith in the HP3000 that the users do. But they're not in positions of sufficient power to dictate policy. While I am sure that CSY is not the only HP division not prominently mentioned in the annual report, simply because there are too many divisions nowadays, I have long believed that perhaps the best tactic for HP and the long-term health and well-being of the HP3000 is to allow it to become a completely separate, wholly-owned subsidiary division of HP, with a new name and a charter to argue its case FOR the HP3000, vis-a-vis HP-UX and NT, with the same level of vigor, enthusiasm and aggressiveness that Microsoft argues for its products. This is the model that GM uses with Saturn. Heck, the slogan is already there: " A different kind of company. A different kind of computer." My only concern is that GM holds too tight a rein on Saturn and that level of control should not be there. When I discussed this idea with Alfredo Rego a while back, he asked, "What would you call this new company." I said that I didn't have the slightest idea. But because we were talking in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I said, off of the top of my head, "Why not Santa Fe?" The more I've thought of it since then, the more I actually like the name, if for no other reason than in Spanish, Santa Fe means the "Holy Faith." And faith and control are the two great pillars of success in all of this. The simple level of business success that HP3000 customers have been able to traditionally achieve with the machine and its software is the only reason to stay with platform. There is no other. But if our individual tasks are to figure out how to extract as much money from our various employers as possible, then we should each individually recommend a complete replacement of whatever computing systems our employers now have in place every three or four years. As a group, we profit best from inducing chaos. But such a strategy certainly does the owning business no good at all -- and sooner or later, there is going to appear a substantial push to make all of this stable, reliable, productive, and profitable. These have long been the characteristics of the HP3000 (or perhaps the SF3000) -- and they're worth fighting for -- because they will eventually be the primary characteristics of whatever corporate database platform proves triumphant. Wirt Atmar