On 09/08/2008, at 2:13 AM, Steve Richter wrote:
I go with the flow on tech support calls. Whatever the tech wants, I
do and figure as long as I stay on the call the problem will
eventually be solved. I give the IBM techs A+ for effort, but gee,
AIX is very cryptic and picky. How did we ever lose out to that OS?
A) because OS/400 gets insufficient wide-scale marketing
B) because it's used as an ideal of OS design in Comp. Sci. courses
C) because Unix geeks (generally) don't know any better
D) because people like you aren't prepared to pay for the proper
error handling in OS/400. You think OS/400 is a commodity item.
You've now learned why it's not. Consistent command interface,
prompting, help text, etc. don't come free of charge. For a long time
IBM buried such charges in the hardware resulting in people like you
complaining about the inequitable costs compared to other commodity
hardware. Now that Unix (or at least its principles) is the
underlying controller for HMC, Hypervisor, and now Blade stuff you
can experience the joy the rest of the world experiences.
E) because Unix (and derivatives) like DOS (and derivatives) requires
much more care and feeding than OS/400 therefore can generate larger
services revenue thus services organisations have a conflict of
interest when recommending solutions to customers. Sell them
something better for the customer (OS/400) or something better for
the services organisation (Unix or WinDOS). Customer interest or self-
interest? Hmm ... difficult choice.
Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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