As someone who has regularly had to deal with OS/400 / iSeries / System i / IBM i (cant' wait to see what the next name is...) over the past decade or so, I've found my respect for these systems only increasing.
Sure it has a clunky default interface, and IBM artificially cripple most systems with licensing restrictions (owning a multi-core Cell processor on which I can only access one core? WTF?), but the virtualization capability, backwards compatibility, stability, reliability and performance really leave standard "consumer" grade server architectures for dead.
I can even run PASE, or Linux / AIX under an LPAR if I want to. It's pretty crazy what these things can do.
I find using them to be almost like living in some alternate steam-punk universe. It's like putting punch-cards into a quantum computer!
Sure it has a clunky default interface, and IBM artificially cripple most systems with licensing restrictions (owning a multi-core Cell processor on which I can only access one core? WTF?), but the virtualization capability, backwards compatibility, stability, reliability and performance really leave standard "consumer" grade server architectures for dead.
I can even run PASE, or Linux / AIX under an LPAR if I want to. It's pretty crazy what these things can do.
I find using them to be almost like living in some alternate steam-punk universe. It's like putting punch-cards into a quantum computer!