It's the middle of January and the final update from Hewlett-Packard about the 3000 end-game is due. Regardless of how much help a source code license might provide, customers are going to need something more crucial to keep 3000s running in the period beyond the end of the PowerPoint chart at left. HP showed off the chart in the fall of 2006, and the vendor seems certain to cut off its 3000 operations by the end of 2010.

For many 3000 owners, HP's exit from the support legions has little impact. We estimate that a majority of the long-term users of the system are already signed on and happy with their third-party providers, many of whom have deeper knowledge of most issues than the HP support staff which is now the steward of all things 3000 at HP.

There's one tool, however, that HP has withheld from its post 2010 release: The software to reconfigure HP 3000 CPUs and system boards. In the event of a fry-out or similar disaster, or just an upgrade, the legitimate HP software will need to be available to the customers in 2011. Not just homesteaders, either, but the migration sites still moving off the platform.

ScreenJet's Alan Yeo put it succinctly: This kind of change to HPCPUNAME and HPSUSAN numbers needs to remain on HP's price list, regardless of what the vendor wants to charge.