Re: IBM Spin Doctors on AS/400 Marketing

In a message dated 97-10-29 04:25:37 EST, you write:

> Back to the original point. I still have trouble believing that someone
>  sees an ad for NT (I assume in print, I have never seen a television ad
>  for NT are there any?) and somehow feels this is going to solve some
>  application problem. Probably all that is happening here is that you need
>  to fill in some details on the last couple times this happened. My
>  immediate reaction is to disregard these claims as untrue, but perhaps I
>  am just mistaken. 

It happens every day.  It is the ignorant user syndrome.  If you work in a
software development shop, you work with and for people who understand
technology issues.  I work with end users.  People who say 'Just put
Windows95 on my machine and I won't have all these problems' but who don't
realize that:

1)Their machine is an 8MB 25MZ 486 with a 200 MB drive and won't run
Windows95. 
2)The problem they keep having is shutting the power off with all their files
open.
3)The AS/400 has nothing to do with their problem, they are not even
connected to it.

But they go into the DP steering committee meetings with with their thinking
controlled by the following syllogism:

It says in Family Computing magazine that the AS/400 is proprietary.
Proprietary is bad.
It says in TWA Advantage that NT is open.
Open is good.
Our back office runs on an AS/400, not on an NT server.
I sometimes have to reboot my PC.
Therefore, the AS/400 causes all out problems.  QED.

This is REAL.  We really have to deal with this kind of 'thinking'.  Read
Dilbert.  This stuff happens.  The solution to THIS kind of problem is
convince IBM marketing to present the AS/400 so that Family Computing
magazine will run articles that say 'The AS/400 is the server of choice'.
Then the syllogism falls apart.  As it is now, we fly in the face of
everything the average power user thinks he 'knows' when we tell him the
truth about the AS/400.  That power use has article after article bolstering
his point of view and we get accused of being stick-in-the-mud big iron
bigots when we refute with facts.  I know it is all perception, but
perceptions are real too and IBM has to deal with them.

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