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Comment by tims33 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why IBM doesn't just pare all of their assets back to mainframe and just own who they are. They are or already have ruined Red Hat and have a worst in class professional services business. They're good at the mainframe and should just keep updating it and following it up w/their weird marketing.

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I imagine answer is revenue - how much of it is from Mainframe as opposed to everything else?

I suppose divestiture of GTS is attempt to do that kind of slimming.

Disclosure - I'm an IBM employee, but always on external gigs so have zero knowledge of direction or internal matters other than what I read here and on The Register... all opinions my own etc :)

There is a chance that selling those divisions might yield better return in a sale. I think you're right on GTS.

I'm still sad they got out of the PC game. Nothing will ever top the PS/2.

Old tech companies that exit their engineering roots to become marketing and sales companies are a sad sight.

Do you mean the x86 PS/2? It was not a very easy system to work with, compared with clones.

I'm mainly talking about the hardware. The mouse had actual bearings in it instead of just a plastic wheel. The quality of the build was insane. Imagine a world where you have that build quality coupled to the right to repair and highly modular design.

Back in the late 80's / early 90's, my dad's business had a few PS/2 machines, in addition to several Dells and Compaqs. The PS/2s were low end models, like the 30 and 25, mainly used for printing up packing lists, but the build quality was very high. Even the keyboards were solid.

I think they sold the rights to Unicomp, who still make repro clicky keyboards like that.

Not just the rights, but the factory itself too if memory serves right.

Okay, yeah true.

The industrial design of those systems was nice but the Micro Channel architecture bus was an abject failure that never got traction.

There are better examples of great IBM PC products, like the ThinkPad.

The nipple mouse? You can't be serious.

Are you kidding? It was like telepathy. You touch it and it guesses where you want the pointer to be.

agree. all trackpads pale in comparison. all of them.

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