Hewlett-Packard Co. will herald the "new HP" Tuesday morning at a news conference in Cupertino, Calif., hosted by HP Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina and ex-Compaq Computer Corp. Chairman and CEO Michael Capellas.

The company will also have briefings nationwide with its top 100 corporate customers, during which the company will finally divulge its product plans for the next three years.

Ever since HP, based in Palo Alto, Calif., declared its intent to buy Houston-based Compaq eight months ago, customers have been left to speculate about which of the companies' product lines will survive. HP will begin sharing that information with its largest enterprise customers Tuesday, but those decisions aren't expected to offer many surprises.

During a highly publicized shareholder fight with HP heir Walter Hewlett, who at long last conceded defeat last week in fighting to block the deal, company executives vowed to embrace the best-performing product lines of each company. The "adopt-and-go strategy" will likely result in HP building its product base around the strongest selling brands culled from either HP or Compaq.

In general, HP is expected to continue to offer its Unix-based servers, Compaq's high-end Himalaya servers, Intel-based servers, storage devices, and commercial PCs. In addition, HP's highly profitable imaging and printing business will remain untouched. Services and software tied to those product lines will survive as well.

But there is one area where HP's adopt-and-go strategy may give way to the unique realities of a market segment—consumer PCs.

While HP's consumer Pavilion PC line outsells Compaq's Presario line, the product brands comprise the two best-selling PC brands in retail stores. Should HP phase out Compaq Presario line, it would likely give up valuable shelf space at retailers as well, virtually assuring a decrease in sales.

As a result, one analyst expects HP to continue to sell both Pavilion and Presario brands.

"If they consolidated brands, they would in effect concede shelf space to their competitors," said Nathan Brookwood, an analyst with Insight 64, in Saratoga, Calif.

But market analyst Daniel Kunstler, of J.P. Morgan, in San Francisco, doubts whether retailers will go along with HP's dual branding.

"I don't know if they can preserve all that shelf space," he said. "While I have no clear indication which way retailers are leaning, over time there's a certain logic to not having so many eggs in one vendor's basket, especially for a valuable commodity like shelf space."

In the end, the sales of each brand will likely determine their future, Brookwood said.

"If you're a retailer, you look at what sells," he said. "If they're both selling well, I doubt they would make a change just because they're made by the same company."

In making decisions for its broader product offerings, especially those impacting enterprise customers, HP will seek to soothe concerns by declaring its continued support for each companies best-known brands, and a relatively slow phase out of less-popular, but profitable, products, such as Compaq's AlphaServers.

For very high-end computing systems, HP is expected to adopt and support Compaq's NonStop Himalaya servers, which are currently used by 14 of the world's 15 largest stock exchanges, as well as financial institutions and telecommunications providers.

HP's decision to adopt Himalayas was probably largely aided by Compaq's decision last summer to migrate those systems from their current MIPS-designed processors to Intel Corp.'s 64-bit Itanium chips, a product HP co-developed. Previously, Compaq had planned to integrate its own Alpha chips into the Himalaya, but abruptly shifted direction last summer when it announced plans to stop making Alpha processors by 2005.

Looking back, Compaq's Alpha decision in June, disclosed less than three months before its merger deal with HP was announced, clearly removed a potential obstacle to combining the two computer makers. However, executives with both companies have denied suggestions that the decision to drop Alpha was in any way related to private buyout talks going on at the time.

Possibly easing the concerns of AlphaServer users, sources said HP will largely stick to Compaq's planned phase out of the Alpha processor, which it acquired from Digital Equipment Corp. in 1996. The decision means the company will still release two more versions of the 64-bit Alpha chip are expected to be released before the line is phased out.

"I was concerned for a while that HP might do something problematic, like decide that really don't need that next iteration of Alpha," Brookwood said. "But I've heard they'll keep the Alpha line going as planned, which should smooth any transition."

As for Unix-based servers, HP's roadmaps will remain unchanged, owning to the company's existing strong position in that market. Worldwide, HP is the second largest seller of Unix systems, based on revenue, according to research firm International Data Corp. HP's position is even more dominate in the mid-range market, consisting of systems selling from $100,000 to $1 million, where HP is the market share leader.

Compaq's products will get the nod again in Intel-based servers, where the market leading ProLiant line will eventually replace HP's NetServer brand.

HP will embrace Compaq's commercial PC brands as well, in keeping with Fiorina's and other executives' repeated trumpeting of the efficiencies of Compaq's made-to-order manufacturing model made during debates arguing HP's reasons for pursuing the deal.

HP will also embrace Compaq's storage business, the leader in market share based on revenue, according to IDC. It remains unclear what impact that might have on HP's 3-year-old partnership to resell Hitachi Data Systems storage devices.