LOL! You noticed that giant jug of blue kool-aide about System-x, p and the mainframe too? One of my colleagues from the UK put in terms any Texan can understand.

Read what he said: http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/eyeonblades/archive/2009/01/27/has-anyone-seen-a-mainframe.aspx

Jason Newton

Distant #3 in X86 after HP and Dell and declining in market share faster than the market is declining. And now Cisco's getting into the mix.

As IBM has a very healthy services and software business, perhaps they should just get out of the X86 server business, a business that they are unable to compete in?

Your friend, colleague or whatever does not have a firm grasp of basic arithmetic, so his analysis is more than a little suspect. He talks continually of "a decline of -6%" and so on. A *decline* is a subtraction. Subtract -6 from a number, you *add* 6 to it.

Don't just take my word for it - grab a calculator. Take 100, subtract -6. Result, 106.

Given that extremely serious error - and no, this is not just a small matter of definitions, it means he can't add up - then frankly the rest of his message is of no interest.