Investors shun H-P and Compaq

Ann Livermore, president of Hewlett-Packard's services division, said yesterday that the merger partners complemented each other's strengths: H-P has particular expertise in serving customers using the Unix computer operating environment, while Compaq has focused on Windows NT, made by Microsoft. She also said the companies' expertise providing support to individual users made them an attractive candidate to be hired by corporations who wanted help setting up networks, then offering support to employees at their desktop computers.