All I can tell you is that they didn't mention any OSes beyond Windows, HPUX, OSF1/Digital Unix/Tru64, and OpenVMS. They may have actually mentioned Linux, but not much -- they talked about VMS more, and they barely mentioned it at all.

Definitly sounds like a presentation aimed at existing 64 bit customers then. If they had any hands on parts, anyone attending would know to avoid Win64 like the plague for now. That was the most convoluted piece of crap I have ever seen. (Both the shipping "Windows Server Limited Edition" that MS even advises not to run in production, and early versions of "Windows .Net 64 Bit Version").

Are you getting your info from the Compaq side or the HP side? We seem to have been coming at them (at least in that meeting) via HP

I'm getting my info from the Compaq side. When the merger occured, the Proliant Itanium line died, and all the HP engineers took the one good thing from their work, the best EFI interface developed for first gen Itanium boxes. Since the Proliant Itanium line died, I haven't heard much about the roadmap for HP Itanium boxes beyong the 2005 timeframe for Alpha to IA-64 migration.

I'm really hoping the information you are getting isn't a hint that Unix support on the Proliant side might die off. The only logical reason I could see for that is they see the Unix market at the high end of equipment only. Still seems silly though, considering the main deployment tool for Proliants (Smartstart) just changed from a Windows core to a Linux/Apache/PHP/Mozilla based one.

OTOH, years ago, at a previous company, we were going to get discounted Compaq machines for some reason, but changed our mind when we asked, cursorily, if running Linux on them would be a problem and were told that it would void the hardware warranty. I try to avoid Compaq for many such reasons.

Seems to be a popular rumor that even went around ignorant Compaq employees for a while. That was never true for the servers anyhow. I can't speak for the Presario or Deskpro divisions though in the past. Currently, quite a few HP products support Linux including the iPaq handheld.