One of the biggest problems facing IBM when it brings out its new RTs later this year is what to call the damn’ things: IBM history suggests that once product lines are perceived by the market to be duds – the Series 1 mini, the 8100, likely the 9370 – the position quickly becomes irrecoverable, and that means that IBM needs to make the new RTs – it’s white hope to catch up in the workstation market – appear like completely new products; if IBM really does have any confidence left, it will opt for the strategy that turned the personal computer industry upside down, and left the world irritatingly talking about PCs when it meant IBM Personal Computers, which means calling the thing the IBM Work Station in the hope that the world will soon start talking about WSs and give IBM a mountain of unpaid advertising.
