HP has got nothing on Mike Magee

So, perhaps, demonstrating that we hacks are, perhaps, unnecessarily paranoid about large corporations.

In our original request, dated the 2nd of May 2007, we asked HP to produce paper and electronic data under the Data Protection Act. HP was not only eager to oblige, but waived the fee as it searched its extensive records. That's integrity for you. And ethics.

We asked HP to provide us with the data from 1989, when we first started tracking it, Compaq, Tandem, DEC and other companies which have eventually turned up in its legacy portfolio.

An obliging attorney provided us with everything she could find. This included HP products we'd bought. Yeah, we bought an Inkjet and a fax machine, it's true.

It also included an intriguing note that Mike Magee is a journalist who works for the INQUIRER and that no-one should pitch him without permission. But there is nothing more concrete in the records of HP apart from the fact we'd attended a storage conference on behalf of the Rogister in 2000, or was it 1999? We forget.

How disappointing. Or perhaps how re-assuring. When we worked for Microscope in 1990, the then editor of the magazine said a story we'd written about HP Laser Jets and crinkly paper had prompted an email to Dennis Publishing demanding that we'd never work for that magazine again.

To the then editor's credit, he continued to hire us until 1993 or 1994. It's quite obvious data is transient in the 21st century. All the Compaq, DEC and Tandem stuff is gone forever, presumably along with other master pieces in pellucid prose of yesteryear. We are grateful to the UK legal officer of HP of doing her level best to dig up the stuff. µ