While users are becoming unbeFUDdled in increasing numbers, blind faith of many top managements in IBM is still widespread, as a story in InformationWeek from an employee at an anonymous oil company shows: when IBM introduced its first modems, there were gales of laughter from the folks at Racal-Milgo at how primitive the things were, but that didn’t prevent the oil company, using 9,600 bps Milgo modems, from immediately evaluating the 4,800 bps IBM 3864 as soon as it came out; the thing proved adequate but inferior to the Milgo, but top management insisted that the criteria be reweighted to bring the IBM modem out ahead, and the firm duly started installing the 9,600 bps IBM 3865 when it became available – only to find that the things would not do dial backup on the multi-drop circuits widely used by the oilmen… The 3865 does not support this feature, said IBM, and when the oilies pointed out that it did work on the 3864 came back with It isn’t supported on them either, it just happened to work.
