So...I went through the muck to configure and order a new IBM Thinkpad X31 earlier this week. During the ordering process everything was listed as shipping immediately.

The first email I received back with order status indicated a shipping date of January 15, 2004.

Since 2004 is not 2003, this has absolutely no tax benefit for me for this year. Plus, I know that IBM will introduce new systems in the first quarter that I'll covet.

Finally, the thing holding up shipping my system? The critical component? According to the last status I was able to pull up out of IBM's antiquated status system my order is hung up waiting for something called Microsoft Windows XP Professional.

I guess things have changed for the worse at IBM, since it used to be the operating system was one of the easy givens in building a new computer system. You just copy the install image, increment the license count in Microsoft's database, and ship the drive.

Perhaps outsourcing the data copying to India was not a good idea after all?

I'm giving IBM until Monday to report back a 12/2003 shipping date, otherwise I will cancel the order.

The funny thing is, I know that this isn't a computer systems problem. What I mean is that my experience with PSG while I was at IBM showed that it's not the computer systems at the source of IBM's problems selling on the Internet.

It's the people and organizations, and their complete and utter failure to work together to create a workable solution for customers. Now that I'm on the outside I've experienced the other side of this. I'm sure on Monday various execs and managers will present status for the previous week and all metrics and measurements will measure up, because they only measure the things they want to measure, or know how to measure. The intangible stuff (like, How many errors did we dump back on customers pulling up the order status screen?) aren't measured and hence aren't reported, and thus IBM management continues blindly onwards.

Maybe it's time for a Dell.