This is good for the longterm [LWN.net]

This is good for the longterm

Posted May 13, 2008 12:25 UTC (Tue) by i3839 (subscriber, #31386)
In reply to: This is good for the longterm by farnz
Parent article: Microsoft vies for budget laptop market with XP price cuts (ars technica)

I've the impression that mainframes never did better than nowadays. Perhaps you're confused
with minicomputers that were wiped away by micros? (Though it happened all before my time.)

And people, don't forget that MS is a software company that has a lot of small to medium
business customers in its grasp with (semi-)custom software.

(Log in to post comments)

BY 1990 mainfarmes were dying

Posted May 13, 2008 14:39 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I've the impression that mainframes never did better than nowadays.

Is this a joke? In 1960-1970 mainframes were THE business computers. All big companies used them. By 1990 they were almost wiped out: only IBM survived and even IBM's mainframes had bleak future. Linux quite literally saved them - but that's totally different story.

Mainframes still selling well

Posted May 13, 2008 16:37 UTC (Tue) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]

No joke. IBM's mainframes continue to sell well. Consider that mainframes have been used for virtualization for forty years, and companies nowadays often use a mainframe to run hundreds of virtual hosts.

IBM did attempt to slowly withdraw from the mainframe market, but then a lot of companies using them for traditional purposes (i.e., non-virtualized hosts) started clamoring for upgrades and new models. Apparently these businesses have a "it ain't broke, so no need to fix it" attitude towards their IT needs.

BY 1990 mainfarmes were dying

Posted May 13, 2008 18:44 UTC (Tue) by larryr (guest, #4030) [Link]

Maybe mainframes nowadays have a 1% share of a market that is 100x as big as the market 40 years ago of which they had 50%, and in that sense, mainframes never did better than nowadays.