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Post by RS Davis on Oct 16, 2003 12:47:17 GMT -5
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Post by dr snootch on Oct 19, 2003 2:43:53 GMT -5
I worked tech support for IBM as a contractor for a year and a half. During my time there, my manager asked me how I liked Lotus Notes. I let on that I did not like Lotus Notes at all, in any way. His response...'It's an IBM product and you're an IBM employee (not technically true, but whatever), you're supposed to like Notes.'
I told him that if IBM made an email client that was user-friendly and intuitive and mail servers that didn't crash all the time, I might be compelled to feel differently.
Last I heard, they lost or were in the process of losing their support contract with Boeing. Guess who's now selling them their computers...Dude, you're getting a Dell if you work for Boeing.
In defense of IBM, they were by far the most employee friendly company I've ever worked for, regardless of the fact that I wasn't actually employed by them, but merely a lowly contractor.
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Post by RS Davis on Oct 19, 2003 13:40:22 GMT -5
I worked tech support for IBM as a contractor for a year and a half. During my time there, my manager asked me how I liked Lotus Notes. I let on that I did not like Lotus Notes at all, in any way. His response...'It's an IBM product and you're an IBM employee (not technically true, but whatever), you're supposed to like Notes.' I told him that if IBM made an email client that was user-friendly and intuitive and mail servers that didn't crash all the time, I might be compelled to feel differently. Last I heard, they lost or were in the process of losing their support contract with Boeing. Guess who's now selling them their computers...Dude, you're getting a Dell if you work for Boeing. In defense of IBM, they were by far the most employee friendly company I've ever worked for, regardless of the fact that I wasn't actually employed by them, but merely a lowly contractor. As a post script, I think IBM is back in the PC game since I wrote that. They aren't doing that great so far, though. - Rick |
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Post by CJYJTJ on Oct 19, 2003 14:13:08 GMT -5
Well, that's bogus about PS/2s only being able to be upgraded with only IBM parts. I had a bunch of non-IBM things I put into PS/2s. Heck- I even had a couple of non-IBM Microchannel machines.
How serious am I supposed to take the rhetoric when they can't even get the basics right?
By the way, Microchannel architecture blew ISA and EISA off the map. IBM's anal licensing was wrong, though. But the hardware? Way ahead of the older stuff.
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Ohm
Newbie
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Post by Ohm on Oct 19, 2003 15:31:02 GMT -5
Well, that's bogus about PS/2s only being able to be upgraded with only IBM parts. I had a bunch of non-IBM things I put into PS/2s. Heck- I even had a couple of non-IBM Microchannel machines. How serious am I supposed to take the rhetoric when they can't even get the basics right? By the way, Microchannel architecture blew ISA and EISA off the map. IBM's anal licensing was wrong, though. But the hardware? Way ahead of the older stuff. IBM changed the archecture inside the machine after letting the original pc archecture loose in the wild. They tried to put the jeannie back in the bottle by coming out with the ps/2. It used standard hd and such, but the footprint of the machine was completely different. You could not go to pricewatch and buy a ps/2 from some small vendor somewhere that built it himself. The ps/2 was expensive also. It died becuase of the free market. The only way they could have accomplished what they wanted would have been through govenment intervention. BTW, certain aspect of the ps/2 would have been impossible to upgrade with non IBM parts, if for no other reason than it would not fit it the box. - Ohm |
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Post by CJYJTJ on Oct 19, 2003 15:42:35 GMT -5
IBM changed the archecture inside the machine after letting the original pc archecture loose in the wild. They tried to put the jeannie back in the bottle by coming out with the ps/2. It used standard hd and such, but the footprint of the machine was completely different. You could not go to pricewatch and buy a ps/2 from some small vendor somewhere that built it himself. The ps/2 was expensive also. It died becuase of the free market. The only way they could have accomplished what they wanted would have been through govenment intervention. BTW, certain aspect of the ps/2 would have been impossible to upgrade with non IBM parts, if for no other reason than it would not fit it the box. - Ohm The original architecture was always open. The original IBM PC even had the original BIOS listing in the technical reference (which I even have still somewhere.) Don Estridge and the renegades at Boca Raton made the system in short order by using off the shelf parts for the most part. It was a quick and dirty design, intended to be manufactured easily and cheaply. That's also why Phoenix and Compaq were easily able to blinly reverse engineer the BIOS functions and create cloned systems so easily (sans the BASIC, which was copyrighted). The problem was, though, when you got the 80286 architecture, and the desire to use more advanced data moving techniques, the ISA architecture was very much insufficient for protected mode 16 bit and 32 bit operations. It also was very much married to Intel designs. Microchannel was designed for multitasking, high throughput systems (where the bus was allowed to have multiple data pathways and controllers) where ISA and EISA struggled in those situations. That's just the beginning of the advantages. Microchannel wa also processor independent, and was used on other than PC level systems. Intelligent peripherals, a change in triggering mechanisms for the cards, and many other things we still argue with now were included in the design 17 years ago. Some of the issues with height on the cards were also issues on ISA and EISA machines. Cards properly designed didn't have those issues. And. no your wouldn't go to pricewatch and buy one. Of course, you couldn't go to pricewatch and buy anything, since pricewatch was many years away at the time. The PS/2 was an elegant, beautifully designed machine that was screwed up not by the design, but by IBM Legal, which can best be described as anuses with faces. |
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Post by RS Davis on Oct 19, 2003 16:12:02 GMT -5
You guys are way over my head on this stuff, but it seems to me the final outcome was the same - IBM pissed off it's market and destroyed its PC division.
- Rick
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Post by CJYJTJ on Oct 19, 2003 16:14:52 GMT -5
You guys are way over my head on this stuff, but it seems to me the final outcome was the same - IBM pissed off it's market and destroyed its PC division. - Rick Bad marketing decisions. Bad licensing mainly- the wanted huge fees- some retroactive, which vendors basically laughed at, and they went their merry way. IBM's problem is they're very smart technology people and idiots at marketing. Plus, they don't listen well. They are good at three things- technology, bullying, and legal garbage. |
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Post by Ancient Dragon on Oct 19, 2003 19:33:31 GMT -5
Anyone know what IBM stands for?
It's Better Manually!
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Post by RS Davis on Jan 17, 2004 22:51:25 GMT -5
Anyone know what IBM stands for? It's Better Manually! Irrellevant Brain Mechanisms? - Rick |
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