IBM Corp’s new PC Power Series machines will be available with the Solaris Unix by early next year but they are being strictly targeted as high-end client machines. IBM Personal Computer Co spokes-beings go out of their way to tell you that they are absolutely not going to be sold as servers. To push the point home, IBM is not going to sell them with Windows NT Advanced Server, only the client package. Weird? You bet – most copies of NT these days are still being sold for server systems. However, if you sidle up to your favourite IBMer and ask nicely, he will sell you a server licence under special bid arrangements. In other words, the product isn’t on the official price list, but you can get it. Why? IBM says the machines simply aren’t meant to be configured as servers, citing things like lack of SCSI on the motherboard. So why not configure the new PCI-based RS/6000 43P as a Power Series – after all it does have SCSI? The answer, it seems, is that the 43P will appear (under a different name) at some time in the future as an NT box. The operating system chosen for the box will also determine through which channel it will be sold: Power Series machines pre-loaded with NT or OS/2 will be sold through the personal computer channel, AIX and Solaris-based boxes will be marketed through the regular RS/6000 resellers.
