Name Help

Don,

We're not silly enough to say only "IBM i." Both the web site and our product catalog clearly do the Prince thing (saying "formerly known as i5/OS and OS/400") as well as listing the hardware these operating systems run on. We also given a 15-minute history lesson as the first part of our first course, so that we can then use the correct terminology. We also don't want to take heat from the name police when we miss a reference to "System i or i5/OS," so we point out that the older names are everywhere, particularly in IBM documents.

In fact, I just reamed out a writer for using "DB2 for iSeries" and then had to apologize when he pointed out that this was the newest name he could find in the info center within the IBM i 6.1 documentation. I had to point out the disconnect in the last five years between the names that are used to market IBM products and the names that are used in documentation and within the products themselves. In more than one course, we've had to say "Although this product is called 'System i xxxxx', don't get upset if you see 'iSeries xxx' on all the screens. The basic functionality has not changed since 1992, so don't get your undies in a bunch. If history serves, they will fix the screens in the next release, hopefully before marketing changes them again."

Bill
William A. Hansen
whansen@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Manta Technologies Inc.
Toll-free: (800) 406-2682 x 101
Direct: (303) 862-4562