ThinkPad "Next Generation"

[Chris Hanson <cph@martigny.ai.mit.edu>]

   Date: Tue, 6 Jun 95 16:14:42 -0400
   From: dewar@GNAT.CS.NYU.EDU (Robert Dewar)

   "What about the PowerPC? IBM claims they will have PowerPC ThinkPads
   out before the end of the year."

   The question is: will they have any interesting software requiring a
   PowerPC. Also will there be a Linux for PowerPC by then?

I didn't claim that PowerPC ThinkPads were interesting.  But the
original question was, what could IBM have up their sleeves that was
sufficiently new that it might justify that kind of promotion?  It
seems to me that, from IBM's point of view, this might qualify.

Unfortunately, while these computers should be out sometime in late
summer, it will probably be next year before they are useful.  IBM is
likely to shoot itself in the foot again, waiting around for OS/2 and
NT to be ported to this architecture, supposedly late this year, with
NT released a few months before OS/2.  And then another year or so to
flush out the bugs in both of them.  Meanwhile all they have to offer
is AIX, which won't sell many of those machines.