Lukas,
At 1/15/08 09:04 AM, you wrote:
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's software support, at least in US (you may have had completely
different experiences in Europe), overall is excellent.
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.
The impression that I get is that IBM puts in the features that
*they* want, the ones that might have high visibility with the big
business crowd, which is not necessarily what *we* want. There are a
few notable exceptions, such as the compiler group and the WDSC group
that make appearances on these lists and seem to take our real world
requirements seriously.
If IBM really took us and the market seriously, we would have
gotten some basic features a LONG time ago, such as:
- A decent native email server system.
- An easy way to print and view graphics - all the industry standard
formats without jumping through hoops and without ridiculous
restrictions or costly add-ons.
- A GUI that is easy to program and maintain, again without costly add-ons.
i5/OS is 10+ YEARS behind the industry in these and several other
areas. I think that it's disgraceful. This box should and COULD be
in very high demand, but quite a few of the basic "services" that are
on low end boxes just aren't there.
I really hope that IBM gets its act together before they need to
decide that it's not profitable enough to support a niche 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.
Add to that list the DB and security integration, the security
model, support for numerous file systems, hardware reliability,
memory management, job control, etc. and you have a winner - in the
back-end piece. But that's not enough to get managers to even look
at it as a new customer. The front end must sizzle and frankly it
doesn't - without jumping through hoops. If you want any proof of
that, just look at any software vendor that provides a decent size
package. How many include the GUI version of their product for
free? They don't / can't, because it costs them so much more to
develop and support the GUI, almost as if it was a separate
product. How many Windows products do you know that the base product
is text only and they charge extra for the GUI? I think that they'd
be laughed out of town if they did that!
Adding insult to injury, the system configurations often need to be
bumped up if a GUI is part of the plan. None of this is competitive
and software vendors are having a tough time competing when the
prettier system is demo'ed next to a midrange system.
But all that doesn't help if you need a 10k software package just to
print invoices with a color logo :)
Exactly!!
-mark
midrange.com
