HP and Compaq's European user groups are merging - after six months of negotiations. Blimey, that's a helluva lot longer than HP and Compaq took to agree to merge, and almost as long as HP and Compaq have taken to integrate their vast businesses. That's the trouble with talking shops: too much talking shop.

The new user group is called HP-Interex EMEA and combines HP user groups from 19 countries and Compaq user groups, or "chapters" from 14 countries. Collectively, the group "reaches" 35,000+ European enterprise customers of HP. ®