News release

Clear Skies Ahead for The Weather Channel with Intel® Itanium® 2 Processor-based HP Integrity Servers

The Weather Channel, the only national all-weather cable network providing 24-hour-a-day weather coverage to more than 87 million homes in the U.S., is building on a current strategy of running its IT infrastructure on open source technology and has migrated to Intel® Itanium® 2 processor-based HP Integrity servers from proprietary RISC-based platforms.

The Weather Channel has reduced physical server count by 48 percent, while server utilization has increased by more than 50 percent, and the time required to deploy applications on the servers was shortened from two days to two hours. As a result, The Weather Channel also cut its three-year maintenance contract costs to one-tenth of the costs associated with RISC-based servers. The Itanium 2 processor-based HP Integrity servers now provide double the performance of the previous platforms at an overall solution cost of 75 percent less.

Taking advantage of solutions based on Intel and HP technology, The Weather Channel has implemented a modular, standardized IT architecture to consolidate applications on fewer servers, optimize facility usage and help lower disaster recovery and licensing costs.

"The Weather Channel is rapidly changing to continue to enhance our ability to deliver innovative services and accurate, timely weather information to millions of our subscribers," said Brian Shield, executive vice president and CIO, The Weather Channel. "The Itanium architecture combined with our open source strategy enables a powerful platform that helps lower the total cost of ownership and provides the flexibility our IT infrastructure needs to meet our growth objectives."

The Weather Channel replaced 138 RISC-based processors with 42 Itanium 2 processors. The Weather Channel deployed 17 two-way HP Integrity rx2600 servers and two, four-way HP Integrity rx5670 servers running RedHat Enterprise Linux 2.1 and 3.0 and Oracle* 9i Real Application Clusters. The servers run applications which power corporate databases, transportation logistics, budgeting software, supply chain management, Web systems, asset management, and a file and print system.

According to The Weather Channel, the Linux operating system provides increased flexibility and a better price/performance ratio when compared to the RISC platform. The databases support customer applications such as WeatherFacts*, which currently provides local forecasts to 15,000 hotels and other outlets nationwide, and Weatherscan*, a 24-hour all-local weather information network currently servicing 8 million TV subscribers. The HP Integrity servers support core business applications and are used in production, development and quality assurance.

The Weather Channel is planning a second phase of its data consolidation initiative and intends to migrate databases used for core weather forecasting from 72 RISC processors to Itanium 2 processor-based servers.

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.

About Intel

Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, is also a leading manufacturer of computer, networking and communications products. Additional information is available at http://www.intel.com.

Intel and Itanium are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

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, including expected performance of products or services, statements of belief and any statement of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include performance of products and services and other risks that are described from time to time in HP's Securities and Exchange Commission reports, including but not limited to the risks described in HP's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the period ended April 30, 2004 and reports filed after HP's 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.