IBM Upgrades issue

Hi guys,

Has anyone come across a draconian new ruling from IBM on 3rd party upgrades???
Our global client with 20 countries on 12 iSeries 6xx, 7xx and 8xx (who can't move up to 5xx because they can't afford to pay the huge fees SSA/Infor demand for new model BPCS keys) are now unable to upgrade for performance. Plan was to consolidate all countries onto existing 4x 8xx and upgrade to max. The 820 in Thailand was upgraded from 2396 to 2437, and now they need the permanent key for the OS, and IBM are refusing to supply! They quote this website
_http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/upgrade_conversion_availability.html_
and no exceptions!
If the third party supplier in Thailand can't get them to supply a key, what happens if their business stops? And longer term, this is going to force them (any many other BPCS clients) to go to a PC system which their board have been trying to get them to implement.....and we will all be out of jobs!!!
Any thoughts?
Apparently this has been on IBM's website since October, or came into force in October, but none of the 3rd party business partners we are in contact with knew anything about it???

thanks,

Clare

Clare Holtham,
Director,
Small Blue Ltd
IBM Certified Professional
www.smallblue.co.uk



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CRPence wrote:

I agree with Vern. I dislike bottom posting [quoted text above reply]. _Spinning_ through posts in a newsreader [e.g. using N=Next in Thunderbird] is extremely frustrating when encountering posts by bottom feeders ...err... bottom posters ;-) Top posting [quoted text below reply] is preferable for me, because I already know what the topic is, esp. when it has kept /on subject/. And... I also know what the prior poster wrote, in most cases, because I have most likely _just_ finished reading the message being responded to... only a moment before I moved on to its reply. I also dislike paging past the quoted text [what I just read in the previous post], to see the reply; i.e. it makes /spinning/ seem more like /dredging/ through the message threads.

Having started with off-line reading [for mail, news, BBs, journals, etc. from downloads using a super-slow modem ;-) ], and having used active news readers [off-line optional], email lists, and web-based forums, I have to say... I have never found anything as nice as using NNTP with a good News Reader. This remains true, even if many replies are posted using /quoted text above reply/.

Vern, Notes client Ctrl-Shift-End works fine for me... but only in edit-mode; I see your point in non-edit. But rather than select and then post, I just let the NewsReader software automatically reformat [to quote] the message to which I am responding. Then I immediately snip excessive quoted details and compose my response. I seem to recall Notes client as news reader having quoting /internet style/ capability, such that similarly, a reply with quoted text enables delaying the edit activity.?

Regards, Chuck