'Stop lying to us' say Compaq customers

Compaq's Unix customers have launched a blistering attack on the company, accusing it of selling them down the river to complete the shock HP mega-merger.

The strength of opposition to the controversial acquisition is apparent from numerous vitriolic postings at the Compaq Unix user forum, Tru64.org.

Compaq Unix user, Klas Erlandsson, was forthright: "I think this truly sucks, I don't think any thing good can come from this. All this talk about PC markets, who cares? What about the Unix systems!

"I am truly a Tru64 fan, the only Unix I use, but now I wouldn't recommend anyone to invest in Tru64, it will definitely die."

Tru64 user Mike Fagan was similarly outraged when he logged into the same forum. He fuelled the growing conspiracy theory that Compaq's recent decision to sell out Alpha to Intel was a cynical move paving the way for HP's takeover bid.

"So Compaq sells off Alpha to Intel as a deal to make the HP merger go through. Of course, HP didn't want Alpha, they're moving to Itanium themselves. It doesn't excuse the fact that Compaq pretty much lied directly to our faces in giving us their new roadmap and such.

"Of course all those people who lied to us will probably be one of the 15k (or 20k depending on where you read) employees to be gotten rid of after the merger."

Fagan summed up the sentiments of many Compaq customers when he slammed the firm for not telling customers of its plans. He said that he would not have made a significant investment in a Compaq-based Storage Area Network had he known the truth:

"They'll choose HP-UX over Tru64. But what will happen with all their other hardware? Lucky us who just spent a bunch of money on a huge SAN with a bunch of HSG80s and the works... where's our upgrade path now?"

"The winners in this merger won't be HP or Compaq, who don't seem to realise that a merger where a huge percentage of your products and employees duplicate each other is NOT a good thing, it'll be IBM, Sun, and Dell who win out on this one," Fagan added.

One outraged Tru64 customer, logged on as Bob, wrote the following open letter challenging HP chairman and CEO, Carly Fiorina: "These guys should be sued for ruining shareholders who had invested in the best technology out there - Alpha, VMS and Tru64.

"They both sold out to Intel and Microsoft. They don't give a darn about their customers - us - only about their own fat rears," he said.

"Stop lying to us. I hope you are listening to this, Carly."

These sentiments were echoed by fellow Tru64 user Dennis Vanamburgh who said: "Maybe you should change the phrase on the title bar from 'Nothing runs faster than Tru64 on Alpha!' to 'Nobody runs faster from Tru64 on Alpha'."

The following comments, from an unnamed Compaq spokesperson who pledged continued support for MPE and OpenVMS customers, were posted on the same forum. The statement also promised to port HP-UX to Alpha:

"Through the convergence of the best of both HP-UX and Tru64 UNIX we will deliver the industry's leading enterprise UNIX. HP-UX would be extended to support Alpha systems.

"We are committed to the plan laid out for Alpha when Compaq announced its agreement with Intel to standardise its 64-bit servers on the Itanium processor family."

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