Re: IBM will announce two new System i models, 515 and 525 on Apr. 10.

In line and a lot removed

Lukas Beeler wrote:

You can't evaluate the system i.

Well I guess that depends on what you want to evaluate. If you just want to sign on to one and see how it works and feels there are services that let you do that. Some have been free some charge (but well worth it ;) ). You can not be the administrator, but I am sure if there is enough of a demand for it the BP or IBM will offer access to a system i. I thought IBM did offer this for awhile. And with the size of the small system i's I would think BP's could have a few to allow sites to test. Sure none of this is as easy as downloading just software and putting on some hardware to test for as long as you want, but it can be better then it has been..

* It's hard to google for i5/OS problems.

As the system i's install base increases I think this will get better.

* The interface is inconsistent - you have to swap between Operations
Navigator constantly - you can't do everything with 5250, but you can't
do everything with OpsNav either. Windows has the same problem, but it's
not as bad as with i5/OS. While debugging active directory replication
requires a command line utility, even basic tasks such as creating a
file share are not possible in 5250, and require opsnav.

I would not say not possible. Some of it may take more work then it is worth, to get it to work from green screen, like coping reports to a pc. But most operations navigator functions call api's on the system i, those same API's can be used by anyone. For shares look at
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/netserver/qusrtool.html I use that, and I have also just keyed in the api from a command line to create a share.
FlyByNight software also sells software to manage shares http://www.flybynight.com.au/oncmd.html


PS: My English is just natural bad, no good excuse. If you would not of mentioned it, it would be hard to tell English is not your first language.