On this holiday we wish our readers and sponsors and supporters the best of this season of giving. We feel blessed to have retained the gift of your interest and involvement in the life of the HP 3000, a computer that is constantly given little respect outside its community; rarely given a chance of surviving in a meaningful role for more than a couple more years — and ultimately given the task of keeping a company running while a migration takes longer than expected, or starts later than planned.

Today we invite our readers to look over an editorial from just two Christmases ago, written long before we knew for certain HP would sell support beyond its 2006 "end-of-life" deadline. HP placed no such holiday present of an extension under the customers' tree this season like it did las December 20. About all a customer could ask for with any reason would be a clear message about licenses for MPE to use on generic PA-RISC servers. We bet HP will be sharing that message in the New Year.

It looks like Dreamgirls might be the Christmas Day movie for 2006 here at our home offices, amid a slate of slim pickings for holiday releases. You may dream of sugarplums dancing in your heads today and tonight, or a continued effort from HP to keep MPE/iX up to date until the support plug gets pulled at "the end of 2008, or later."