[TristanBall]

Having worked at an IBM shop, referring to ibm's x, p, i and z series by letter was pretty common, to the point of standard, and same with "our regular ibm customers". ( even if we only dealt with x and p, most folks were at least aware of i and z ) Outside of the IBM ecosystem sure, although once your outside that lots people wouldn't know what an as/400 was if you dropped it on their head so it probably doesn't matter what you call it. ( "expensively fatal" in that specific example, but that's unlikely to be a good marketing term )

I used to get irritated by IBM's naming, and to an extent still do, but it's more things like calling the motherboard the planar and things like that. A lot of the heat went out of that when it occurred to me their usage probably predates "motherboard", but even then keeping it still feels like an attempt to differentiate their stuff to justify higher prices. ( which sometimes is justified, depending on generation and timing, but that'd be true regardless of the nomenclature )

[kragen]

let's ipl from the dasd