to 20 minutes. Hublou's statement came true when the machine was "immediately returned." In a training session that December, a new version of MPE was able to run four users and crashed only once every two hours. The system was continually patched to keep it running as new bugs were found. Machines continued to be shipped, both to customers as well as companies that were considering purchases. These invariably ended poorly, unable to support more than four users. The schedule for MPE features continued to be pushed back, and the estimated number of machine sales continued to be reduced. By this time, the development of an HP 2000 replacement had been underway for 5 years and had cost the company $20 million. The problems were not going unnoticed and ultimately ended up with Bill Hewlett. Hewlett asked Barney Oliver to take over the division, but he refused, and Paul Ely was sent instead in his place. Ely quickly ended production of the machines and, in a move still mentioned in historical works to this day, recalled all of the machines that had been shipped out. Dave Packard sent a memo to everyone on the team, today known simply as the "Wow Ouch memo". Ed McCracken went back to the customers and told them point-blank that the machines would not be available until the fall of 1973, and that the machines would only support four to six users. Some accepted the offer of an HP 2000 in place of their orders, while others broke down and cried. One customer threatened to sue the company, but were put off by the personal intervention of Hewlett who stated he would do everything in his power to fix the problems. Re-release The system then entered a six month period of redevelopment of both MPE and the hardware. MPE emerged as MPE-8, officially ending real-time support. The hardware improved to run about 30% faster than the original model and was priced 20% less. As a result of these changes, the new system was able to run eight users. Shipping re-started in November, a year after the original date. After another year, an updated version shipped. This new "CX" model replaced core memory with semiconductor memory and replaced the wire wrapped CPU boards with surface mounted components. MPE-C added COBOL and RPG languages, perhaps the first mini to offer the former. As part of the CX