Is the printing issue really an OS issue? Windows OS does not print anything. The vendors print driver that is added on to Windows does that. Windows might supply a standard path from my app to the driver but it does not do the printing.
I will admit that vendor supplied print drivers for i5/OS is very lacking. We use IBM's Infoprint server to do some of this type of work when going to an AFP printer but also send most of it to a Xerox printer that has built in overlay/font controls
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Aaron Bartell
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 10:45 AM
To: 'Non-Technical Discussion about the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: RE: i5 Youngsters
Couple comments.
1) Systems don't ship with QSECURITY at 20 (to my knowledge). Mine was
shipped with 40. Was it a concious decision somebody had to make to take it
down to 20? That would be my guess.
2) Expired support contracts are a decision by the company, not a problem
with i5's.
3) I agree telnet without SSL is a fairly huge security risk along with the
HTTP admin server. I setup Wireshark on my PC to "sniff" the transactions
going to my i5's IP address, and you can see user and password in clear text
with both telnet and HTTP admin (you obviously need to base64 decode the
HTTP admin one, but a quick google search does that for you).
Based on what seems to be one of your main concerns, can anyone speak to a
nice third party package for printing on the i5 with overlays and the like
(I would say it needs to run natively to be considered a valid option,
otherwise it is entirely correct that the i5 lags in this space). I don't
do too much printing per say, but do more generation of PDF's and query-able
web pages using RPG-CGI or RPG and XML.
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Lukas Beeler
Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2008 8:04 AM
To: Non-Technical Discussion about the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: i5 Youngsters
On 1/15/08, Aaron Bartell <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
1) Windows and i5/OS are not created equal. What I mean by that is most
all
shops would agree that i5/OS is more stable than Windows. We can talk all
day about having the best and most knowledgable Windows engineers, but in
the case of i5/OS, you simply don't need to have an elite to make
stability/reliability/security happen. Am I way off here?
I usually replace around 20-30 Systems i per year. Most of them are in
horrible shape. Failed arrays, expired support contracts,
non-supported OS, QSECURITY of 20, unsecured Telnet without SSL
encryption. Administrative HTTP server without SSL encryption.
Properly setting up i5/OS is difficult, and requires a lot of
knowledge. Making permissions correct, enabling SSL, deploying
appropriate config is a lot of work. Windows Server, on the other
hand, comes with a rather secure default config.
I do respect your opinion because as far as I can tell you have a fair
amount of experience in both camps. It just surprises me that you are so
anti-i5/OS. I get the feeling the root is pricing and that then effects
most of your other opinions/facts to have people steer towards Windows
clusters/farms. If the pricing for hardware and OS were a wash between
Windows and i5/OS, which would you prefer in most cases?
I'm not against i5/OS, though i understand that one would get this
impression following this conversation. I've got 3 years of Experience
with it now, and i've recognized a lot of problems with i5/OS. But
also a lot of stuff that is a lot better than on other platforms. The
problem is that right now, i5/OS can't run a Business on it's own,
which is doable using Windows and also more or less doable using
Linux.
I've made very good experiences with Microsoft's technical support and
their technical contacts. I've always talked with people that at least
pretended to care about the problems i had.
Same on IBM's hardware side, but their Software support ist just a
group of lunatics with no real clue. I've written a few posts to
midrange-l regarding a lot of issues i had when trying to get proper
print output from the System i (i.E. modern, graphical, overlays,
color).
IBM doesn't care about that, and they're not trying to fix the
problems the platform has. Microsoft, however, has always been
responsive about fixing problems, and they're constantly improving
their OS.
i5/OS has many things that work really well compared to other
platforms. Inplace upgrades of Windows machines are a nightmare. On
i5/OS, they're completely automated and you just walk back at a
running System. Job control is also much easier.
But all that doesn't help if you need a 10k software package just to
print invoices with a color logo :)
--
Read my blog at
http://projectdream.org
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