Re: When an AS/400 is called an iSeries

Darrell,

This is, I think, the inherent problem. We spend more time trying to work
out what it was, why they did it, what went on, and how crappy it was,
rather than becoming a community around a brand name.


IBM sells i5 servers. They can run i5/OS, AIX 5L, Linux 64-bit and using
iSCSI, can provide tight integration with Windows and Linux 32-bit.

Since many people still have AS/400s and iSeries servers, there is a name to
bring us all together - that name is System i.


Sure, it does not match what everyone likes, or be what everyone wants, and
it may not make sense to every myopic developer, and it certainly annoys
some green screen programmers. But it is what we have. It is OUR ugly. I
guess we are like any dysfunctional family (or is that d(i)sfunctional?),
but while we keep calling it an AS/400, the world thinks we are out of date.
Regardless of whether or not you like it, saying the words "System i" is
less difficult than people are making it out to be.

Trevor




On 6/11/07 12:14 PM, "Darrell A Martin" <DMartin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Trevor:

I think my "Series i" blunder (although affected by sleep deprivation at
least in part) points out what is, to me at least, the biggest problem
with the name changes. It is *NOT* the frequency, which is well within the
normal range (perhaps even less often than some other members of the
genre). Rather, the problem is that the current names -- even taken in
isolation -- seem to be inherently confusing.

For example, the operating system is "i5/OS". The server name is "System
i5". The platform family is "System i". Yet it is suggested, sometimes
emphatically, that a machine that was built as an "AS/400e" running
"OS/400" (our Model 720) has somehow morphed -- first into an "iSeries"
and then into a "member of the System i family" -- if I've got that right.
Interestingly, that same machine actually *is* capable of running "i5/OS"
even though -- again I venture what I think is correct -- the Model 720
does not run on a Power 5 chip.

In the "other world" the operating system nomenclature is completely
separate from the CPU nomenclature. M$FT's "Windows" in its various
incarnations cannot be confused with the chip it is running on by anyone
paying the least attention: 80286, 486SX, Pentium, Athlon, Turion, and a
host of others. Ditto for Linux and Mac/OS. Even where there is a close to
one-to-one relationship, the naming distinction is maintained. It may not
make the computer any better, but it sure helps keep the discussion
clearer, IMHO.

Beauty is as beauty does, and we have a beautiful platform to work with;
but ugliness is in the i....

Darrell