I contacted HP's PR firm and requested information about the situation, was given the cold shoulder for two months, and finally received the following statement: "HP will continue to support our current installed base of HP SureStore AutoBackup PC25/PC100 customers with bug fixes and call support for five years. As long as the customer continues to use currently supported operating systems, HP will support the customer's use of the HP SureStore AutoBackup PC25/PC100 product."

In other words, the product will not run on Windows XP. Why did it take months to find this out? It's a raw enough deal for the HP AutoBackup customer without adding the way HP evaded the customer and put me off for two months.

Misinformation abounds here: I also was told that this HP AutoBackup had been discontinued, but when I looked around the Web, I found that the product is still actively being sold -- with no mention of the Windows XP problem.

I understand the concept of buyer beware, but I question the morality of selling a $10,000 solution that will be outdated within a year. The product works with Windows 2000, so how hard could it be to write a driver for Windows XP?

I also understand the economic sense of discontinuing a product, and HP cannot make every product support every new version of Windows as it flies out of Microsoft's door. But is it unreasonable to expect software support for two years on a product that costs $10,000?

This is just the kind of thing future Compaq customers are worried about.