i am a number of weeks into aix 5L version 5.1 (company standard says so), and i have two gripes with it:

my first gripe is: there is no tab complete, not even <esc> <esc> works, and any combination after that isnt worth it as it'd be quicker to type it. Anyone found a way around this i would very much appreciate it if you could tell it here.

second gripe: the arrow keys to use commands that were in the history dont work. very annoying but at least <ctrl-k> works as a vi alternative.

After all this i do have to say that i very much like smit. quality tool, that. over all AIX is a good os.

Both your complaints seem to relate to the Korn shell rather than AIX. If you want Bash functionality, just install bash on your AIX boxes.

You'll find it on the "AIX toolbox for Linux Applications for Power Systems" CD which should have shipped with the base OS CDs. Install it using the standard rpm commands, or through smit install_latest.

ah yes, true true its a ksh limitation is it? is there anything i can install (apart from bash as i doubt thats "company policy")?

Not that I know of; ksh just doesn't support those features. Sorry.

ksh command history is like "old fashioned people vi" works.
You type EDITOR=vi
and then you type ESC k in order to go higher, j to go lower, space to move from one character to the next one, dw in order to delete a word, c2w to change two words, etc.
If you prefer, you type EDITOR=emacs, and you use emacs commands (Ctrl-P, etc...).

The TAB is another problem. TAB is CTRL-I, some terminal descriptions don't accept it. If you are on the main graphic console, type ECHO $TERM and look if the answer is dtterm or aixterm.

You know, the problems you face seem to show that you are not a true Unix user, but a Linux gadgets user. This means that, on a "true" Unix (AIX, sun-os, HP, etc...) you will have to learn some tricks, or install your favourite bash environment just like iainr says.
Hope this helped.
Zorba

Also for the command completion in ksh:

set -o vi (Put the shell in vi mode )

<esc> \ ( completes command line )

And use the <esc> k for history like zorba stated, once in vi mode.