A luggable single-user version of the IBM Corp AS/400 is doing the rounds in the company’s Rochester, Minnesota laboratory. AS/400 systems manager Glenn Van Benschoten says that it is reasonably certain that the huggable luggable, as he calls it, will come to market. It weighs around 25 lbs and Benschoten says that it should cost between $5,000 and $6,000. If it emerges, the machine will be targeted primarily at business partners and software developers. The luggable is just one of a series of market-specific AS/400s that will be optimised for particular roles: the next 12 to 18 months should see an AS/400 tweaked for local network file-serving and another with hardware and software modifications to improve performance as a pure database server.
