RE: Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than Switch

Even better. The value is in the integrated operating environment, as
well as in consistency. As Aaron said, integrated security and job
logging. Add in work management, output management, ease of backup and
recovery, the ease of system management, and that built-in database
thing.

Why do people clamor for Apple to unchain OS X from the Macintosh? The
same reason why people here want to unchain OS/400 \ i5/OS from the
system I platform.

Now ask yourself: why doesn't IBM offer the greatest integrated OS and
database separately? The same reason why Apple locks OS X to the Mac
hardware: stability and consistency.

Argue all you want about IBM and Apple charging a premium for their
systems, but it is an integrated system. Since you control the hardware
environment, you can optimize device drivers, the kernel, etc. for the
environment. Simply, neither the IBM OS or Apple's OS X would work as
reliably on generic hardware.

The interactive tax... that another story.

Loyd Goodbar
Senior programmer/analyst
BorgWarner
TS Water Valley
662-473-5713
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Booth Martin
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2006 14:41
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Saving the System i: Fight Rather Than Switch

Is the pricing value of the System i in the hardware, or in the 
consistency of the platform software over decades?

Steve Richter wrote:

On 12/8/06, Trevor Perry <tperry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I expect that 4x faster is just a number you made up. And it was not
considering apples to apples.

 this quad core p5 has 4x the CPW of a single core i5:
http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/p/hardware/entry/550/91331efa.html

here is an ITJungle chart showing the i5 to be 2x the price:
http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh110606-story02-fig02.html

you dont have to answer of course, but I would like to know what IBM
is thinking in terms of pricing of the system i5.  The user and vendor
community could build a new GUI that works with green screen apps, but
such a thing would likely go nowhere if the base i5 remains geared
down and over priced.

-Steve