Re: I'm about to give up on "System i"

[Scott Klement <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Aaron,

> I am also in the middle of writing some documentation and I have
> started to simply use "System i5" as a way to describe the new name.
> At the beginning of the documentation I declare "System i5" to be
> synonymous with iSeries and AS/400 for the sake of the text.

If you use the term "System i5" you're referring to a particular 
generation of servers.  It's similar to (in the PC world) referring to a 
"Core2 Duo".  It refers to a specific generation of systems (the current 
generation) and not to the predecessors.

So if I use the term "System i5", and you don't mean "only the current 
generation", then you technically should say "AS/400, AS/400e, eServer 
iSeries, eServer iSeries i5, and System i5".

In the PC world, that would be like saying "8086, 8088, 286, 386, 486, 
Pentium, Celeron, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium IV, Core2, Core2 
Duo".  Which nobody would ever do -- it's just too cumbersome.  People 
would simply say "PC family".

That's why IBM came up with the term "System i".  System i refers to the 
entire family of servers, not just a particular generation.  So that's 
what you REALLY want to use in the documentation you're writing.

If you say "When I refer to System i5, I really mean everything in the 
System i family" then you're being rather confusing, because that's not 
the way anyone else uses the term.  It should be "System i" when you're 
referring to the whole family.