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So, basically everyone is saying: If you need your AS/400 with interactive support, you pay X dollars for the AS/400 and X dollars for the interactive hardware. If you don't want the interactive functionality, you just pay X dollars for the AS/400. It sounds rather similar to the old 386 and 486 days. You paid X dollars for a CPU and an FPU and you paid less with the FPU disabled. So Intel had a "FPU tax" in place? :) Am I following this correctly? Adam Lang Systems Engineer Rutgers Casualty Insurance Company http://www.rutgersinsurance.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andy Nolen-Parkhouse" <aparkhouse@mediaone.net> To: <midrange-l@midrange.com> Sent: Friday, December 28, 2001 2:47 PM Subject: RE: Changed to: Interactive Tax > Adam, > > Using the term 'interactive tax' is a way of espousing an emotional > leaning on the topic to begin with. > > Trying to strip away the emotion: > > IBM needed the AS/400 to compete in the 'server' space with Unix and NT > boxes doing client/server and web work. In order for this to happen, > they dramatically lowered the price of the AS/400 (iSeries) base > processors when they were only used for these types of batch workloads. > > IBM also had an established revenue stream from those clients who were > using the AS/400 for traditional green-screen interactive work (5250). > In order to maintain this revenue stream they implemented a two-tier > performance system in which the 5250 work is limited by a hardware > feature. This feature is purchased separately and can be quite > expensive. These established customers are paying slightly less than > they did on previous models but considerably more than they would have > if IBM had allowed the entire processor to be available for interactive > work. It is a 5250 governor of sorts. > > My guess is that they are trying to maintain an existing revenue stream, > while allowing the iSeries to be more competitive in the server space.
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