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Forum summons Woz, plus Who's founder

WozIO From the groupies of '60s rock to the tech geeks of the '70s, this month's HP Technology Forum is summoning celebrity to attract IT attendees. Steve Wozniak, Apple computer founder, and Roger Daltrey, former front-man for The Who, will be on hand at the conference that shows off HP's latest for those customers sticking with their vendor after migration. It's a historic event, judging by the age of the headliners.

Wozniak is the guest star at a rollout party for Fusion IO's solid-state storage-accelerator product, dubbed the HP IO Accelerators. Fusion IO got serious about storage solutions last year with its ioDrives, deployed at MySpace's datacenter. Fusion likes to point out that an ioDrive is not a Solid State Drive. The Fusion hardware, which integrates with a server, is supposed to run rings around SSDs in performance. But that 2009 device is sold in capacities that will remind you of a drive (80, 160 and 320GB). In addition to performing with Linux, Fusion's product runs with Intel-based servers using Windows, the most popular alternative for the migrating HP 3000 shop.

You can shake the hand of the man who plucked technology's first Apple at a beach party at the Forum. A beach party in the desert of Las Vegas -- nothing unusual for Vegas, where an Interex show once included custom beach-towels passed out by Robelle at a Wet 'N Wild splash party -- is scheduled for June 22 at 8:30 PM. We've been invited to the Woz-fest, and were also told to pass along registration details to our customers (that's you):

Go to www.hpandwoz.com/register and use a password of wozinvegas.

As for Roger, he's having his first Las Vegas appearance since the Who's Reunion Tour of 2006. The Connect user group, organizing much of the content and entertainment for the week, has promised its most loyal members a chance at access to the rock star who was nominated for 1978 Golden Globe playing Tommy.

Daltrey For Tech Forum attendees who add a Club Connect VIP Pass to their registration, the user group will enter their names into a drawing to meet Daltrey, or the show's other music headliner, the Goo Goo Dolls. Rolling out on another tour this year, The Who's frontman has been performing and writing since before the HP 3000's predecessor, the HP 2100, booted up in the '60s.

The closer access to the music comes as a bonus for registering for introductory training that Connect calls You-Conn. Hands-on labs on June 21 in EVA management tools and techniques, or Network Forensics and Analysis: Inside the Filth of Network Communications, include a VIP Pass and a $100 Home Depot gift card. Such perks tacked on for one-day sessions in tech wizardry like HP-UX system admin or virtualization.

Registration for the conference is still underway at pre-show pricing at the HP-Connect website. Despite Daltrey's lyric from his song My Generation, no one left at the top of this bill will die before they get old. Keith Moon and John Entwistle have already departed the band and headed into clouds of a non-technical kind.

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