Re: Computer Hardware is a Commodity

["Mike Naughton" <mnaughton@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Buck,

I agree sort of, but not entirely. IMHO, "what the customer runs"
includes all the administrative, security, and database functionality
that for the end user is behind the scenes. I think the AS/400 is a
combination of reliable hardware and OS/400 -- as you say, reliable
hardware may be a commodity, but OS/400 definitely is something
special. Did you ever try to get two PC applications from different vendors
to talk to each other (or even one vendor, if that vendor is M$ ;-})?
People
who come to the AS/400 from other platforms (like myself) love how easy
it is to get around, find things in, and work with.

Again, IMHO, the application software is the weak link. There are too few
choices, it's too expensive, and most of it runs like c**p unless you do a
lot
of modifications. If OS/400 ran on more types of boxes, I think you'd see a
lot more vendors jumping in, and that situation would improve.

Just my .02. . . .

MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com writes:
>The bottom line is that AS/400 is _the application software that the
>customer runs on it_    I believe that if I wrote a Windows NT clone of
>OS/400 and people could run their current application suite on cheap PC
>hardware, they would abandon AS/400 hardware in droves, uptime or not.
>
>Buck Calabro


Mike Naughton
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Judd Wire, Inc.
124 Turnpike Road
Turners Falls, MA  01376
413-863-4357 x444
mnaughton@juddwire.com

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