"I'm more hoping that they just concentrate on technology and the company and don't make an overly big deal over the whole scandal -- everybody seems to be obsessing over this," said Yturralde. "It happened in the past. I don't really think it affects us, the IT guys."

This conference is intensively focused on technology. There are no sessions exploring the ethics and legality of pretexting -- the practice of acquiring telephone records by pretending to be someone else -- or sessions examining boardroom best practices. The issue that users interviewed here are most interested in are those that have dogged the company for a long time, such as the future of HP-UX, its Unix operating system.

"I'm a techie, and I just want to know if there's a long-term future for Unix or HP-UX, or is everything going to be migrated to the hegemony of Microsoft," said Rob Roy, who works for Advanced Technology Solutions Inc. in Dallas, a systems consulting firm. He said he will be looking for insight into HP's long-term direction on HP-UX and how it fits into its emphasis on open systems, "which they categorize as Windows more even than Linux. That leaves HP-UX out in the cold, I think."

Dan Berry, a senior systems engineer at Lockheed Martin Corp., called the boardroom issue a "big distraction. I don't want to hear anything more about telephone records."

Berry said his chief concern involves HP's decision to move off its PA-RISC chip. Lockheed runs a major human resources system on hardware based on that chip, and migrating to Itanium -- HP's recommended customer direction -- will cost his company millions of dollars.