Right, I forgot about that.
Plus a true mac admin can always grab a latte and visit his users in person, because the servers in the background just keep running, and since there are no viruses to clean up, and all the users are non-admins, there's very little to actually do.

And of course, there's iChat which lets us do remote control for our users on the other side of the state.

Apple Remote Desktop (http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/) is $499 for unlimited clients.
But if your company doesn't have $500, you can use any VNC client, as the macs support it natively (In the sharing settings is where you set up VNC access).

You make a good point on the cheapest hardware possible. I haven't been in the windows world for a while, so what is the expected price and rotation in years on a machine. Back when I did virus cleaning for 50% of my "admin" time, we'd spend $1100 - $1500 on a machine and rotate every 3-4 years.
Are businesses now buying the $600 specials from Walmart? Or are they still spending over $1000?
$1199 will buy you a 21" iMac, C2D 3.06GHz and 4 GB of RAM, which should easily last you 3-4 years. Comes with Exchange mail and clients out of the box, that even a clueless user can set up on their own. (Provided they know their email and password, which I admit can be a tall order.)(Of course adding the 3 year applecare does add to the total.)

As far as being cool, I think that's just a byproduct of design. Take the iMac for example, yes it does look cool, but its all in one design makes it a breeze to set up/replace. You can carry two at the same time, plug in ethernet, power, keyboard and it's good to go. You don't need to manage 2 boxes and interconnects between them. Magic mouse is spendy, but it has no moving parts, no balls to gum up with hand lotion and should last a long long while.

It was 4:20 on the coast when he posted that.
What about the stuff about hardware open-ness? Seriously 90% of the hardware problems are because the supplier used 3-rd rate components, or shipped with faulty drivers. Granted, yes there are instances when you need a special card to drive a device, but when was a last time a legion of bankers or bean counters demanded some crazy hardware? Yes, clearly it's a great investment into my business.

Software open-ness? Certainly, that's why you can, you know, grab a copy of XCode for free and start developing for OS X. But that's just too much work, when you're doped up on info world and other pundits, it's much easier to whine.

Pardon the uninitiated, but with 10.6 supporting Exchange Mail and Calendar with setup time of about 2 seconds (to enter your email and password), why does one need Outlook?

Voice translation works great, I'm using it now!
Why a little bit earlier, I was dictating a letter to my set double the killer.

ahh, darn it anyhow, the vodka is good, but the meat is rotten as we say.

THAT would sell, but why stop at legal? Tabloid size WOULD sell twice as much!

Man we can do this all day...

The device you mentioned is 100% thicker than iPad (1 inch vs .5), heavier 2.11 lbs vs 1.5, and a battery rated for only half the time of iPad's. (5 hours vs 10)
Yes, to some of us looking at the form factor and how we'd use it, those things are well worth the price difference.
Which is apparently only 50 bucks for that device you linked to.

It's like the stupid has invaded all corners of the web, but anyone that may find a nicely designed and built device with thousands of useful apps, well, useful is an iTard.

Dan Brown posts to slashdot!?

I gotta admit that was a compelling little narrative.

good insight

It's late and I'm tired, but what they're saying is, if you be Puffin, you be flying high?
I'm down with that.

With apologies to a poster on one of the rumor sites, Bing is not a search engine, it is a decision engine.

But in all seriousness, the only reason why Apple would even consider doing this, is if Google already abandoned them elsewhere, and there are no signs of that.
I'm pretty positive that Steve hates Microsoft, what it stands for, and the way it does its business. Pretty much like many Linux folks do.
If he should allow for this, I'll eat my shorts. (Figuratively!)

Has fraunhofer institute elaborate how they intend on recouping their cost for this EMP technology?
By each machine or by each hole punched?
Their record with MP technology is somewat shaky, to pardon the pun.