RE: Mac is the AS/400 of Desktop Computing per Dvorak

IBM has listened to a bit of the feedback, the
$112K interactive tax on the 270 was cut to $60k
in the recent announcements. Still silly but down
out of the realm of crazy. And you still have to give
IBM credit for moving what was a $2,000,000 machine
in the early 90's down to a more affordable level these
days.

Given IBM's declaration that OS/400 is device independent
you have to wonder if they ever considered issuing
OS/400 for Intel. This might allow developers to jump
on or off the bandwagon based upon the merits of the
OS rather than some obscure TCO equation. It certainly
worked for Oracle in the early days when the $199 pc
package spawned a whole new generation of developers.
I believe that low cost, high productivity development
tools are the key to the usage and acceptance of any
operating system.

In another note, one of the strongest arguments IBM is
making for the iSeries these days is the multiple LPAR
support. This can be easily duplicated on Intel servers
as well using software that can partition the CPU, so
even Intel servers can play the server consolidation game.

Regards,

Konrad