Re: Thank for your correspondence - The letter I got from the folks at FAST400

["Leif Svalgaard" <leif@xxxxxxxx>]

From: Al Barsa <barsa@barsaconsulting.com>
> o     If IBM fails (at thwarting your product), they will do away with the
> premium for interactive.  I understand that this is what you want, however
> this will have two consequences:
>       2).   The one that all AS/400 customers will not like, IBM will have
>       to raise the price of systems high enough to keep the iSeries portion
>       of the company viable, which will have a significant (upward) effect
>       on the price of systems.

Al, you advance an argument here that I never saw the logic of.
We had heard for years now that "IBM wants us to get off the green
screen and that the interactive tax was the 'incentive' to help us
achieve that". If we all followed IBM's direction and got off 5250,
IBM would then (according to your argument) be forced to raise
the price the "keep the iSeries portion of the company viable".
I'm sure IBM would love to raise the price (for whatever reason),
but they might just price themselves out of business. The box is
already overpriced. If IBM cannot compete fair and square against
Sun, HP, and Intel-based servers, then they deserve to be put out
of their misery.