The only really big question about the new AS/400 Advanced 36 is why it has taken IBM so long to come out with a convincing upgrade for System/36 users – we have been saying for four or five years that IBM should put a System/36 CPU in the same box as a baby AS/400 and price it so as to be attractive to 36 users, enabling them to move their workload across at their own pace: the new machine offers exactly that capability and is a much more elegant solution than the brute-force -and-ignorance two-CPU method, but it’s arrived so late, and far too many System/36 chickens have already flown the coop – many of those 36s are used, not new.
