Graeme Watt at Tech Data cautions: "HP is still saying it will take 12 months to merge the two channels, which is a long time. In the meantime, there is intense competition, which does hurt margins. But so far, our fears of market turmoil have been ungrounded."

Fabian von Kuenheim, head of Magirus, the big workstation distributor, says: "The merger has gone much better than Compaq's acquisition of Digital. HP has prepared well and carefully. It helps that both companies were in the same product area - Compaq didn't understand a lot of what Digital did."

But European labour laws have slowed things up further.  The merger has yet to be consummated in France, Belgium and Germany. Distributors say this means that HP staff are still often inward looking.

However, distributors say that, in terms of logistics, things have gone well. Von Kuenheim says: "Compaq product has been switched to HP's fulfilment system, which is much more efficient."

Messaging has also been reasonably clear.  Von Kuenheim says: "Right from the start, HP has said that large desktop volume sales will go direct, unless the resellers are adding value."

But distributors worry that the HP sales-force may misinterpret the message. "Old HP's big systems side had a sell-direct mentality, and there is a danger that people may over-interpret the direct message and try selling to smaller customers," says Von Kuenheim.

The biggest mistake so far was HP's decision to change its terms and conditions on May 1, just before the merger went through.  Distributors say systems were not properly primed and that HP was unable to tell anyone what their prices were for six weeks!

Our Analysis: If a six week black-out is the worst things get, then this could well be deemed a successful merger. The main thing, says Watt, is for HP not to become obsessed by internal processes.