News release

HP to Host Unified Technical Users Conference in 2005 as Showcase for Adaptive Enterprise Strategy

Conference attendees from across HP's customer base to benefit from training and education certified by HP

HP today announced plans for a new technical users conference in September 2005 to be led by HP.

HP also reaffirmed its strong support as the Premier Sponsor of HP World 2004 in Chicago and David Parsons, vice president, enterprise segment marketing - Americas, Customer Solutions Group, was named the executive sponsor of the Encompass and Interex user groups. HP World 2004 runs Aug. 16 - 20.

For the first time, the 2005 conference will unite the education and training across HP's broad base of user groups - systems integrators, value-added resellers, independent software vendors, HP Certified Professionals and partners - alongside HP's technical presales teams. The conference will instruct technical users in the Americas in how to help companies synchronize business and information technology (IT) in order to embrace change, accelerating the journey toward becoming Adaptive Enterprises.

"Creating a brand new technical users conference hosted by HP is a natural evolution of our strategy to provide one 'face' to our customers," said Parsons. "Most of our users have multiple HP solutions running in their IT environments. By coalescing the various HP user events under one roof, we can provide training direct from HP that goes beyond any single technology area to reflect the real-world data centers of our customers."

In planning for the 2005 event, HP is reaching out to all of its major user groups to participate. Encompass has already pledged its collaboration on the 2005 event, and discussions are still in progress between HP and the other user groups.

"We are looking forward to HP World next month in Chicago and are excited to support HP in its plans for a new technical event in 2005," said Kristi Browder, president, Encompass. "User-focused, quality content remains our highest priority. We confidently anticipate that Encompass members will continue to benefit from a dynamic user community and quality networking opportunities at next year's event and beyond."

HP plans to provide further information on the 2005 technical user conference location and date in the coming weeks.

About HP

HP is a technology solutions provider to consumers, businesses and institutions globally. The company's offerings span IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices, global services and imaging and printing. For the four fiscal quarters ended April 30, 2004, HP revenue totaled $76.8 billion. More information about HP (NYSE, Nasdaq: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that the market for the sale of certain products and services may not develop as expected; that development and performance of these products and services may not proceed as planned; and other risks that are described from time to time in the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended Jan. 31, 2004, and other Securities and Exchange Commission reports, filed after the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, 2003. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.