Re: V7R1 service withdrawal; upgrade to V7R3

And this hardware concern has me concerned about many vendors. There are
an awful lot of vendors out there who just like to milk their customers
like a cash cow. They look at computers as nothing but a drain on
profits. So those who just had to get new hardware to test 6.1 and it's
object conversion issues may have been the last time they bought new
hardware. I worked with one vendor who wouldn't even run ANZOBJCVN on
V5R4. They used the new OS and new machine as yet another excuse to delay
investment. Now I suspect many of those who bought hardware for that are
going to find out that this hardware will not support rNext. I suspect
there will be very few machines which supported 6.1 which will also be
able to support rNext. I am not basing that on any insider information. I
am only basing that on IBM announcing the EOS for many models is coming
up. That, and the last release which was one which ran on any machine
which supported 5 releases of IBM i was V5R4.

When a vendor pounds their chest and brags they still support older
releases going back to V4 something that means nothing to me.
I'd much rather hear from a vendor who participates in IBM's Early Ship
program and announces on GA date of rNext that their version has been
tested and ready to go. If they have to announce EOS for older release of
IBM i that's fine (and often a good sign) to me. And it would make me
downright giddy if they announced that future development will be geared
towards this new release and customers will have to upgrade to get these
new features. I'm tired of vendors dumbing down features, techniques,
style, etc to support some version of the OS from 3 releases back.


Rob Berendt