I am sorry to hear that IBM has decided to sell its PC business.


The first PC I bought was the original IBM PC with DOS 1.1 and Lotus 1-2-3. It was one heck of a machine at the time and made financial modeling and forecasting a snap.

I collect old IBM's and have a boat load of PC's and old software. Most of the early IBM's are in my collection as well as some of the popular software of the day. (PC's are cheaper to collect than cars and take up MUCH less space).

It's going to be strange not seeing IBM in the PC world anymore but, the profits were slim so it's a wise business decision from that perspective I guess.

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Bill Wood - Retired Webmaster
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IBM is very much a services/consulting company now.

I worked for Systematics, which was an IBM spinoff, back in the early 80s. We did facilities management for banks using all IBM mainframes. I was lucky enough to get a hold of some of the first XTs that came out, and I started doing ASCII data ports from the mainframe to the XT, teaching myself dBase II in the process. The mainframe bitheads scoffed at the little box, calling it a "toy". I started producing reports in a few days that took them weeks to do on the mainframe, and next thing I knew I was promoted from System Admin to Programmer/Analyst, one of the first PC programmers in the company. Talk about something that changed entire lives, that little 640k box certainly did mine. I remember the first 286 AT. Man that was fast! 4mhz! Wow! What a long strange trip it has been.

the PC business has become a commodity business, which is very much the main reason why IBM is selling it off, with the more lucrative profits being in the services/consulting and bigger iron (mainframe) business.

That being said, the PC business is largely responsible for IBM's mindshare in the computer market, these products being consumer items. Among these, the ThinkPad stands out in the minds of consumers. Contrast this with an IT consulting/services company that does not produce its own hardware/software (i.e., consumer items) - chances are that such companies are not household names.

Wow! Quite amazing. I mean IBM< NOT in the computer business??

Guys,
I was just wondering............I'm currently in the market to buy a laptop. Right now, I have a thinkpad and love it, but am thinking about upgrading to another IBM.


Do you guys think this is a wise decision to even consider a thinkpad, for the fact that IBM is selling it's PC business? Or should I jump ship to some other maker who will still be around in 5-8 years for support.


Any input or ideas?
Vu

Vutown, I dunno. Could you just get what you want and then find a _good_ local repair shop if you need? IBM computer parts themselves should be around for quite a while, so you shouldn't have to worry about having a 5-lb paperweight.

Say, why was it that the MCA bus didn't catch on? ...

At least IBM's supporting Linux. That should give them quite a few mre service contract opportunities in the near future.

That sounds like me...

I was doing SQL reports on an HP5000 mini when the TRS80 and Visicalc came along. I started doing manufacturing load analysis and amazed the IT (accounting) guys at the time. The TRS80 was slow as a dog but showed the potential. I bought my own IBM PC with 1-2-3 and it was so fast. I owe several of my promotions along the way to the results I was able to get out of the IBM PC.

Later on I used to use a 3270 emulator on my PC to connect to an IBM mainframe. Using FOCUS (database) I would download data and produce analysis that would amaze management. I've still got a copy of PC FOCUS somewhere.

Those were the days

__________________
Bill Wood - Retired Webmaster
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1998 Mercedes E430
2010 Toyota Sequoia
My Photo Albums

An Unknown Giant Flexes Its Muscles
By DAVID BARBOZA

Published: December 4, 2004

HANGHAI, Dec. 3 - Lenovo. Who?

Although virtually unknown in the United States, Lenovo - said to be in talks to buy I.B.M.'s personal computer business - is China's largest PC maker and the world's fastest-growing one. And it is emblematic of the ambitions of emergent Chinese industrial giants to create global brand names and capture market share beyond their own borders. Formerly relegated to a low profile as the cheap assemblers for the rest of the industrialized world, Chinese companies now have their sights set on becoming global powers in their own right.

The Lenovo Group, partly owned by the Chinese government, had sales of over $3 billion last year and is currently ranked eighth globally among PC makers. It is the overall leader in Asia outside Japan, where NEC and other Japanese companies dominate. (I.B.M.'s Japan unit is in the top five there, though, adding to I.B.M.'s allure for Lenovo.)

Based in Beijing and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Lenovo has made its mark by producing a line of low-cost PC's, some selling here in China for as little as $360. With huge sales to Chinese government agencies and schools, and immune from the tariffs levied against foreign brands like Dell, Hewlett-Packard and - so far - I.B.M., Levono now controls about 27 percent of the Chinese PC market, which is about to pass Japan to become the world's second-largest personal computer market after the United States.

http://nytimes.com/2004/12/04/business/worldbusiness/04asia.html

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Ah yes, the mighty 3270 Emulator, the card I built my career on. I don't remember the name of the package used to pull EBCDIC off the mainframe and convert it to ASCII, it might have been Focus but that does not ring a bell, I think I used something different.

I also used Visicalc prior to the introduction of the PC on my very first computer, a Kaypro portable running CPM. I spent something like $3000 for the thing. It didn't even have a hard drive - I don't even think they were invented yet for PC's - it had two floppys, you loaded the top one with your software package and wrote data to the one on the bottom. Wordstar, Visicalc, Basic, and some database package I don't even remember were included with the computer. Computers were a lot more fun then. I never really got into the Radio Shack products altho I did have a Color Computer, which was a neat little game box - but I spent a fortune on the Commodore line. I still pull my Commodore 64 out once and a while and jack with it - those were some of the greatest computers ever made.