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The IBM logo is if you are a business that needs 24-7 hardware support. THAT is what you are paying for.

"The IBM logo is if you are a business that needs 24-7 hardware support. THAT is what you are paying for."

Only if you are able to continually buy their "latest mousetrap" in order to have support that is affordable and cost efficient.

IBM has consistently made ownership of older systems prohibitive in terms of service contract expense.

In my museum, I have 2 System 36 systems, both given away due to upgrading to newer systems that carries affordable service contracts. I also have a fair sampling of their PC based systems, as well as Unix and CPM machines from various manufactures.

The junkyards are the best place to get old IBM technology, as they pay the highest price to past owners; just for the metal content and the re-mining rights to super conductor material used in the circuit boards. No one wants to (or can afford to) purchase older IBM technology with plans of putting it into operation. Service and parts are just too hard to come by for a business to have an older IBM Mini computer system in operation and having to depend on it for a living.

I turned down an AS-400 over the weekend; nearly a "come and get it" situation.

This will probably seem to many as a "So What" post.

This is the "What":. In 1981, IBM realized that many smaller businesses would never be able to justify the expense of their Mini Computers (System 3X).

They decided to design a desktop box to meet the needs of smaller business owners. Their criteria was simple; single user and single task. In other words, the entire PC market was born out of a design that specifically was designed from the ground up to only allow one user, and one task at a time - Single User, Single Task.

They felt that 64K of RAM was the maximum that the platform could support, and the maximum that any customer would ever, in their lifetime, need for any application.

This is what your "confuser" is probably a descendant of; unless you run a 68xxx based micro pro, which is a true multi-task, multi-user processor.

Now, what do we run? Windoze - A multitask, multi user OS. We run it in a box that was copied from a design that was created to only allow a single user to perform a single task.

Is it any wonder that Windows is considered "Gates Revenge"?

The IBM logo is if you are a business that needs 24-7 hardware support. THAT is what you are paying for.

Paying for it does not infer that you will actually receive that support. I have dealings with them daily and have nothing at all good to say about their support organizations.

They offer nothing of value and should be culled from the marketplace; there's other more well organized and effective support corporations looking for that market share.

not necessarily -- their real thinkpads (as opposed to the i14XX series ACER's branded as IBM) are great machines.

unlike the DELL laptops we've bought (have had HALF of them go belly up in the last three years) NONE of the IBM thinkpads have failed, even though they receive far harsher usage... i would hate to see IBM's design team break up