Re: iSeries marketing

I remind you that we are just about out of time to submit a petition that 
will go in the next stock holder's meeting.  I do not know what should be 
said in it.  

Past year's petitions have been related to not shafting past employee pension 
deals, and various standard business disclosure of director info.  It does 
not seem to take much in the way of stock to launch one of these things.

All of the stock holders get copies of these things with the ballots for who 
should be IBM directors.

I believe that there were two sets of ad ideas floating around.

One was the notion of an ad or letter to editor of WSJ where several 400 fans 
collectively ask that IBM marketing of the iSeries be better focused on its 
strengths, and various other things we wish for be more seriously considered 
by IBM.  I believe this is what you are saying might back fire.

The other was the notion that various 400 enthusiasts might package what good 
400 ads could look like & present it to IBM & lobby IBM to use something 
comparable.  I had suggested that IMHO might be a good place to place some 
such proposed ads then have a survey for folks to vote on the ad they would 
most like to see IBM running.

Talking about IBM ads ... I saw a new one today.  I just started getting 
e-Week magazine from Ziff Davis & today (Tues 10-10) I got the Oct 9 issue 
which has several articles of potential interest to folks concerned about the 
AS/400 image.  The center-fold, pages 63-66 (4 pages) is an IBM ad in which I 
can only say WOW.

First page is picture of a stealth fighter on deck of air craft carrier & 
alond side are some familiar e-server boxes ... the text is

NEW BANDWIDTH
 NEW WIRELESS
  NEW STANDARDS
   NEW DEMANDS
    NEW EXPECTATIONS
     NEW WORK
      [ NEW WORLD ]

Second page is about e-server in the new world of new attitude with basic 
business infrastructure & radical new results.  One of IBM standard general 
marketing statements that I have seen before, except the e-server is right in 
the middle of it.

Third page focuses on New Thinking & New Science
One column continues second page new vision new thinking new actions to cope 
with business realities of today.
Other column hits on e-server strengths
every platform from Win 2k to Unix to Linux (400 not on that list)
superior performance figures including the fastest Web server on Earth
open standards like Linux combined with IBM quality support
capacity on demand pay as you grow
uptime assurance ... no specific numbers cited

New Science mentions the world's fastest computer, memory efficiency, most 
cost effective Linux server in the world, with some specific numbers

Last Page has equal sized blurbs on each of the 4 Sieries

for our familiar 400, we are told
fast implementation, high performance, near zero maintenance for thousands of 
ready to run business solutions
64 bit, copper & SOI, up to 16 Gig Memory, up to 4 Tera Dasd, various other 
strengths listed, models start at $ 10 k

More info from ibm.com/eserver

The actual articles in this issue of e-Week contain various statements about
Oracle (page 11)
PC world (all over)

There's also some strong ads by IBM competitors

pages 46-47 has a real cute ad "If someone tells you it takes only 5 minutes 
to install up to 240 Gig on the network, don't believe it!"  "I did it in 
43.55 seconds."  If I am reading this ad correctly, this scenario is not a 
hot swap like the 400 supports. www.snapserver.com

pages 4-5 say that Mission Critical stuff should be on Microsoft Intel 
because millions of other customers trust this platform & point at case 
studies at intel.com/go/lycos

page 9 says that Mission Critical stuff should be on Sun, which mentions 64 
bit

pages 12-13 & 36-38 says that M$ SQL Server is way fast without giving any 
speed numbers, and says their latest stuff is their most reliable ever, 
cleverly neglecting to mention that they are not as reliable as some other 
brands we could name

page 26 from Compaq reminds us the world never stops & neither should our 
business.  A very clever ad talks about other systems that are not reliable 
so you should get a Compaq which makes no promises about being any better.

page 17 & 19 & 21 & 29 & 31 & 33 & 49 is HP running multiple OS & has various 
flexibility without any specific numbers but some specific promises ... they 
can adjust our capacity over the phone without a service call ... Hmm does HP 
have a disk space barrier that you pay extra to open up, like IBM's penalty 
box for interactive?  I think the HP approach of alternating their full pages 
with magazine text & each time telling us something new about their box is 
effective advertising 

Alister William Macintyre 
Computer Data Janitor etc. of BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 on IBM e-Server i-Series 400 
model 170 OS4 V4R3 @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies

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