News release

HP to Unite Customer and Partner Training at "HP Technology Forum 2005"

New conference to be largest HP training venue and product solution showcase in North America

HP today unveiled further details regarding a new HP-led technical conference to be held next year that will unite its major user groups, customers and partners.

HP Technology Forum 2005, currently scheduled to be held in New Orleans, Sept. 12 - 15, 2005, will be the first conference to deliver qualified, consistent education and training opportunities across HP's broad base of customers, partners and employees - including HP systems integrators, value-added resellers and independent software vendor (ISV) partners, the HP Certified Professional community,⁽¹⁾ user groups and members of the HP Americas presales and support organization.

The conference will be held in the Morial Convention Center and will be the leading venue for technical users in the Americas to learn about the latest HP software, systems, technologies and services to accelerate their journey toward becoming an Adaptive Enterprise.

In planning for the 2005 conference, HP is working closely with each of its major user groups in the Americas, offering continued HP support for separate user events next year while promoting HP Technology Forum 2005 across its enterprise segment. As of today's announcement, Encompass U.S. has said it will collaborate with HP on the 2005 event. In addition, OpenView Forum International has pledged their participation while continuing to host its planned software-focused user event in June 2005.

Compared with the multiple, existing user organization conferences, HP Technology Forum 2005 will offer more solution- and segment-oriented technical training, in-depth sessions and hands-on workshops, along with greater access to HP executives. HP will deliver additional details as its 2005 conference plans unfold.

User groups support HP's unified conference strategy

"There is a lot of buzz right now about user group revenue models and risks associated with modifying conferences," said Kristi Browder, president, Encompass U.S. "Encompass runs a lean operation and we're flexible enough to share a conference with other user groups as we have done with Interex over the past few years. We're excited at HP's offer to drive a larger, more integrated event that delivers broader training opportunities to meet the changing needs of our user members."

"We see HP's new conference as an opportunity for cross-training and exposing more of HP's enterprise customers to HP software solutions," said Henry Wojcik, president of the 7,000-member OpenView Forum International. "Because of the timing, we're continuing to produce the HP Software Forum in June 2005 in Denver as planned, but we'll also be working closely with HP and Encompass to participate with them in New Orleans in fall 2005."

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.

⁽¹⁾ Includes HP partners, customers and employees certified through the HP Certified Professional program, which is a worldwide certification program that recognizes technical expertise on HP technologies and solutions.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they never materialize or prove incorrect, could cause the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any projections of earnings, revenues, or other financial items; any statements of the plans, strategies, and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning proposed new services or developments; any statements regarding future economic conditions or performance; statements of belief and any statement of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. The risks, uncertainties and assumptions referred to above include employee management issues; the timely development, production and acceptance of services and their feature sets; the challenge of managing asset levels, including inventory; the difficulty of keeping expense growth at modest levels while increasing revenues; 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.