I read the article this morning with delight. Another enlightened soul, another pragmatic businessman who understands cost versus benefit.

I have never bought an Apple product even though they are generally quality devices.

Why?

Cost versus benefit.

They are overpriced.

They may have been more user friendly and less problem prone in the past, but I do not believe that to be true now.

I have encountered as many or more problems with Apple computers in my sphere of influence.

From Market Watch October 8, 2015.

“Why I dumped my Apple iPhone for a Microsoft phone

Oh, and I’m not comparing the latest, most high-end models either. I’m not talking about the iPhone 6s or 6s Plus, nor about the latest Windows alternative.

I wanted a solid smartphone for work, including email and various online, social media and professional applications, and a few other things.

At this point, the rate of evolution is such that even basic smartphones would be considered amazingly advanced pocket computers by the standards of a couple of years ago. I didn’t need the absolute latest so I went for the entry level.

I bought a brand-new iPhone 5c on eBay EBAY, +0.00% as soon as Apple discontinued their regular sales last month. The price dropped about 50% overnight. I chose the 5c because it basically does about the same as the 5s for about half the cost, and because the plastic body means it’ll cope better if I drop it. (The 5s looks really beautiful — until you enclose it one of those big, ugly plastic cases.)

Meanwhile, by happenstance I also found myself simultaneously the owner of a Nokia Lumia 635, which costs just $70, compared with around $250 for my discounted 5c, and $450 for a 5s from Apple.

And to my surprise, it’s the iPhone, not the Lumia, that I’m dumping.

The screen is much bigger. The phone is lighter. The keyboard works better for my fingers.

I can add all the memory I want through SD cards. The Windows Phone does absolutely everything I want, just as well as the iPhone or better — for a fraction of the cost. It also comes with Microsoft Office. And it will be updated to Windows Phone 10 later this year.

Oh, and it’s a minor point, but I don’t need to buy a special iPhone cable to charge it. The Nokia uses standard micro-USB. Apple must be the only phone company that still pulls that annoying proprietary-cable crap. Even Sony SNE, +1.63% has given in.”

Read more:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-i-dumped-my-apple-iphone-for-a-microsoft-phone-2015-10-08?page=1

From the Internet Explorer Team Blog January 22, 2015.

“Project Spartan and the Windows 10 January Preview Build

Thursday, January 22, 2015 12:08 PM

Yesterday, we announced that Windows 10 will ship with a brand new browser, codenamed “Project Spartan.” Designed for Windows 10, Spartan provides a more interoperable, reliable, and discoverable experience with advanced features including the ability to annotate on web pages, a distraction-free reading experience, and integration of Cortana for finding and doing things online faster.

Spartan is a single browser designed to work great across the entire Windows 10 device family – from keyboard and mouse on the Windows 10 desktop to touch, gestures, voice, controllers and sensors.

Powered by a new rendering engine, Spartan is designed for interoperability with the modern web. We’ve deliberately moved away from the versioned document modes historically used in Internet Explorer, and now use the same markup as other modern browsers. Spartan’s new rendering engine is designed to work with the way the web is written today.

Like Windows 10 itself Spartan will remain up-to-date: as a service, both providing new platform capabilities, security and performance improvements, and ensuring web developers a consistent platform across Windows 10 devices. Spartan and the new rendering engine are truly evergreen.

Spartan provides compatibility with the millions of existing enterprise web sites designed for Internet Explorer. To achieve this, Spartan loads the IE11 engine for legacy enterprise web sites when needed, while using the new rendering engine for modern web sites. This approach provides both a strong compatibility guarantee for legacy enterprise web sites and a forward looking interoperable web standards promise.

We recognize some enterprises have legacy web sites that use older technologies designed only for Internet Explorer, such as custom ActiveX controls and Browser Helper Objects. For these users, Internet Explorer will also be available on Windows 10. Internet Explorer will use the same dual rendering engines as Spartan, ensuring web developers can consistently target the latest web standards.

What does this mean to web developers?

If you are building a public consumer-facing web site here’s what you need to know:

Our new rendering engine will be the default engine for Windows 10, Spartan, and Internet Explorer. This engine has interoperability at its core and consumes the same markup you send other modern browsers. Our standards support and roadmap can be found at http://status.modern.ie.

Public Internet web sites will be rendered using the new engine and modern standards, and legacy Internet Explorer behaviors including document modes are not supported in the new engine. If your web sites depends on legacy Internet Explorer behaviors we encourage you to update to modern standards.

Our goal is interoperability with the modern web and we need your help! You can test the new engine via the Windows Insider Program or using http://remote.modern.ie.

Please let us know (via Connect or Twitter) when you find interoperability problems so we can work with the W3C and other browser manufacturers to ensure great interoperability.”
Read more

Microsoft just announced the release of Windows 10 which will be a free upgrade for PC Windows 7 and 8.1 users and Windows 8.1 phone users. There will be no cost to keep it current going forward.

One of the new features, Cortina, is on my Windows Nokia Lumia 630 phone that I have been using for about 6 months. So far this has been one of my favorite cell phones in over 20 years.

From To Market News January 21, 2015.

“What’s new in Windows 10 for PCs? A lot.”

“Coming into today’s Windows 10 event, we already knew a lot about Microsoft’s latest and greatest. The company explained the thinking behind its new OS back in September, and the Technical Preview has been available for months. The core change comes in the form of a revitalized desktop experience — one that puts the best of Windows 7 and 8 into a single package. Windows will also now better match the convertible devices Microsoft is pushing, with a consistent UI across all platforms, but there’s a whole lot more to explore here, including some features detailed today for the first time. Let’s take a closer look.”

“If you’ve been following Windows Phone at all, you’ll know what Cortana is: Microsoft’s take on a personal digital assistant. The mobile version offers features that are a mix between Siri and Google Now, but the PC version has a few added benefits. Cortana plugs into Windows search, meaning if you ask for “PowerPoint slides about the charity account,” it’ll search your computer and OneDrive accounts for relevant files.”

“Perhaps the biggest news, though, even if it doesn’t benefit the majority of Windows users — is that Windows apps will now be universal and run across PC, tablet, phone and even Xbox One. That doesn’t mean PC users won’t be getting new apps as well. Microsoft blazed through a load of new apps for Windows.”

“As early reports suggested, Project Spartan is a new browser for Windows 10, entirely separate from Internet Explorer. Sure there’s a very clean, almost Chrome-like design, and a brand-new rendering engine, but the focus here is on social sharing. You can highlight and annotate websites before sharing them with friends, kind of like having Skitch built right into your browser. There’s also Cortana integration and a reading view that, much like Pocket, lets you read pages offline.”
Read more

From the Microsoft Windows Blog January 21, 2015.

“Today I had the honor of sharing new information about Windows 10, the new generation of Windows.

Our team shared more Windows 10 experiences and how Windows 10 will inspire new scenarios across the broadest range of devices, from big screens to small screens to no screens at all. You can catch the video on-demand presentation here.

Windows 10 is the first step to an era of more personal computing. This vision framed our work on Windows 10, where we are moving Windows from its heritage of enabling a single device – the PC – to a world that is more mobile, natural and grounded in trust. We believe your experiences should be mobile – not just your devices. Technology should be out of the way and your apps, services and content should move with you across devices, seamlessly and easily. In our connected and transparent world, we know that people care deeply about privacy – and so do we. That’s why everything we do puts you in control – because you are our customer, not our product. We also believe that interacting with technology should be as natural as interacting with people – using voice, pen, gestures and even gaze for the right interaction, in the right way, at the right time. These concepts led our development and you saw them come to life today.

Delivering Windows as a Service and a Free Upgrade to Windows 10

Today was a monumental day for us on the Windows team because we shared our desire to redefine the relationship we have with you – our customers. We announced that a free upgrade for Windows 10 will be made available to customers running Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows Phone 8.1 who upgrade in the first year after launch.*

This is more than a one-time upgrade: once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device – at no cost. With Windows 10, the experience will evolve and get even better over time. We’ll deliver new features when they’re ready, not waiting for the next major release. We think of Windows as a Service – in fact, one could reasonably think of Windows in the next couple of years as one of the largest Internet services on the planet.

And just like any Internet service, the idea of asking “What version are you on?” will cease to make sense – which is great news for our Windows developers. With universal Windows apps that work across the entire device family, developers can build one app that targets the broadest range of devices – including the PC, tablet, phone, Xbox, the Internet of Things, and more.

For our enterprise customers, we’ll continue to support the way many of them work today, with long-term servicing for their mission critical environments. With Windows 10, a best practice we recommend for many enterprise devices is to connect to Windows Update and be kept up-to-date with the latest security and productivity improvements as soon as they are available. You can learn more about our commitment to enterprises here, with much more to come in the following months.”
Read more

What is the current usage of the AS/400 family, I Series and System I computers in business?

I wanted a number so I emailed IBM twice today.

I believe that the number will surprise many, but having worked on the entire IBM midrange of computers beginning in 1981, it will not completely surprise me.

Having also begun using PCs early as well (I owned one of the original IBM PCs), the AS/400 family has always seemed more professional and efficient.

Fully functional database processing has always come with the operating system.

At one time, in the early nineties, Microsoft corporate ran on AS/400s. This has always been a source of embarassment for them.

Microsoft replaced their in house AS/400s in 1999.

I had to use the Wayback Machine of March 2, 2001 to retrieve this article.

“AS/400s Extinct at Microsoft Since May, 1999

In late 1995, Microsoft began a project to centralize and modernize its legacy computer systems. The project was vital to saving the company money by streamlining Financial, Human Resources, Order Management, Distribution and other vital line-of-business applications at the very heart of Microsoft’s internal computing information environment. These applications ran on a number of divergent and geographically distributed computer systems requiring complex and custom interfacing to form an aggregate system that was anything but integrated. Included were 12 AS/400s, 3 VAX clusters, and at least 50 Microsoft® Windows®-based client/server systems. In 1999, the project was completed and the legacy systems were replaced with one centrally managed SAP R/3 solution, consisting of just 15 Windows 2000-based application servers that share a SQL Server™2000-based database. Today, with the new system, instead of taking several weeks to close the worldwide consolidated books, Microsoft can now close every month in five days or less.

Situation

In the mid 1990s Microsoft and its worldwide subsidiaries used legacy business systems running on the IBM AS/400 with expensive custom interfaces and no common taxonomy.
Solution

Over the next few years, the legacy system was replaced with a centralized ERP system (SAP R/3) running on Windows 2000 and SQL Server 2000.”

http://web.archive.org/web/20010302103702/http://www.microsoft.com/technet/showcase/itops/as400tn.asp

Obviously the problems that Microsoft was experiencing were not due to using AS/400s.

Their problem was non integrated, out dated systems and procedures.

I am certain that a consolidation using new software on one or more AS/400s could have solved their problems and saved as much money.

But that would not solve their larger problem.

Image.

When I get a number of AS/400 family installations from IBM or elsewhere, I will update this article.

However, I found a great article that dispels many myths about the AS/400 family vs PC systems.

“Keep Your AS/400

You will hear many myths about your AS/400
Here are some bad arguments for migrating away from your IBM i-iSeries-AS/400

The AS/400 is obsolete. It was introduced in 1989. It’s old technology.

The AS/400 (now called the IBM i or iSeries) product is younger than the PC.
Like the PC, it has had continuous hardware and software improvements.
Version 8.1 was just announced around May 2014.
Your iSeries can host dynamic web pages and web services.
It can run PHP, Perl, Java, and Ruby on Rails.

I’m told that AS/400’s use old computer languages like RPG and Cobol.

That’s true.
RPG-ILE and Cobol-ILE date back to earlier versions from the 1960’s.
But Microsoft’s Visual Basic, ASP and .NET languages are really just
updated versions of BASIC which also dates back to the 1960’s.
C++, C# and Java are all updates of C from the 1960’s.
in fact, both Java and RPG-ILE were created in 1995!

And as noted above, you can also use PHP, Perl, Java, and Ruby on Rails.

We want internet applications. AS/400’s can’t do that.

Sure they can.
Click here to see a demo Shopping Cart web page running on this iSeries.

iSeries-AS/400’s also run Java and PHP.
It’s hard to access AS/400’s over the internet.

Not really.
Click here to install a plug-in to Internet Explorer to
start an SSL encrypted iSeries session on this iSeries
This is one of many ways to connect to an AS/400 – iSeries – IBM i

You have to buy expensive software to run internet applications.

No.
The Shopping Cart program and iSeries sessions above
were written WITHOUT ANY EXTRA SOFTWARE.

My iSeries also can automatically zip data files and EMAIL them.
It also automatically downloads and uploads data
using the internet file transfer protocol (FTP).

All this without extra software.

AS/400’s are expensive.

Not anymore. They are price competitive with Windows solutions.
$15,000 will get a platform big enough to run a $100 Million
distribution or manufacturing company.

Application software is not included. There are lots of options.

We want to use mainstream technology used by successful companies.

You’re in pretty good company.

Here is a partial list of companies that use AS/400-iSeries:

Many Casinos in Nevada and N.J. (Harrahs, Ameristar Casinos, American Casino,
Boyd Gaming, Borgata Casino, Table Mountain Casino)

AAFES
Ace Cash Express
Adidas
Affiliated Computer (ACS)
AIG Insurance
Air Wisconsin Airlines
Alcoa Inc
Alcon Laboratories
All England Lawn Tennis Club (Wimbledon)
Allied Waste
Allstate
Amarillo Pathology
America’s Health Insurance Plans (www.ahip.ord)
Amway
Ashley Furniture
Bally Technologies
Bank of America”

Read more:

http://www.texas400.com/keepyouras400.html