>>I see them going head to head with IBM on the big boy stuff as a whole,
>Against the z50's and z90's ??

Hell yeah. Already, price wars between Sun and HP are springing up with <$1000 unix servers. I think that the merger will be able to put HP in a leadership position if they execute well.

>A compnay trying to focus on two marketing stratagies at the same time? Rarely works.

For large to medium compaines, its difficult, but when you combine what Compaq is working on, what HP is working on, remove the redundancy and run a more effecient ship, I definitly think that both companies experience and executive staff will make the strategy possible.

>I'm not sure that HP taking on Compaq's debt puts them in a better position.

Maybe, maybe not. Unfortunely, we maynever even get a chance to see.