You may not, but the market says thin and light sells. Otherwise we wouldn't see a ton of companies copying apples Macbook Pro.

The Matte screen is just a film layer of the display. There are plenty of reputable matte film products on the market, and since the bezel is behind the glass in the MBP it's one of the easiest installations out there.

First, Ultrabooks are not all that much cheaper than the real Mac Book Air. Often they are just as much, if not more expensive when they try to copy the all metal case. There's a bit more of a delta in price on the larger 15" Mac Book Pro, but the windows machine is still going to be thicker and heavier. Once you start comparing truly comparable hardware the premium is pretty small. This is especially true once you start comparing all metal case laptops.

Want to save money, go with plastic. Resale value on a plastic laptop is pretty abysmal. The hinges are prone to cosmetic cracks and the finish gets pronounced wear patterns.

You also need to take into account with mac you're getting a free productivity suite, free OS upgrades, and you don't waste the first few hours of ownership removing a ton of bloatware and crippleware. Add that to the resale value and it makes fiscal sense to me.

Many credit cards have built in 1-year extensions to the warranty. I'd start there.

As far as the RAM, meh. It's not windows, there's not a lot of cases when you would upgrade the RAM for OSX.

Battery on the other hand is a real issue. Yeah, the "new batteries" aren't supposed to have recharge issues, but PC makers have been using that line for over a decade.

It's not like Apple spends it time having a Seance to talk to Steve's ghost just to figure out how to piss people off. You want an ultra-thin notebook and you're going to sacrifice serviceability. You look at windows based ultrabooks and the serviceability is better than Apple, but not by that much. It's still a hassle to fit a battery into that space and an even bigger hassle to replace the battery. You start making the laptop more modular and a few things will happen. 1) You'll compromise on size and weight. 2) You start getting flex issues issues in the case (like it or not the glue on apple products has more to do with durability and case flex than it does with repairs). It become even more pronounced with plastic cases. 3) You end up with design compromises that make the overall experience horrid.

So where does that leave the IT professional? Well, if it's for work there's likely a service contract. The glue is the problem for some guy at the referb factory. For home? Either put up with it/get applecare contract, or hackintosh one of the cheaper ultrabooks out there and live with what that entails.

From your viewpoint what's the current state of licensing in the Open Hardware community? It seems to me that Hardware is far more likely to be encumbered by patents, licensing consortiums and other players in the ecosystem that are all about the Benjamins. It also seems like the hardware community doesn't have an outspoken advocate like Richard Stallman (or maybe that's a good thing).

I think so. See Mohawk Guy on the Mars Pathfinder project.

You will always need a small about of Ethanol in the gas for oxygenation. MTBE was banned because of ground water contamination. Ethanol is relatively inexpensive and doesn't have the baggage of MTBE. It's here to stay because of the smog problems places like California have.

The gov't should have realigned subsidies for cellulosic ethanol, they also should have pushed a natural gas change over for heavy trucking.

Almost all pre-loaded software on a major PC brand (excluding Apple) is crippleware. In many cases the computer vendor has been paid to pre-install the software. So my answer to people about the first thing to do is to uninstall all that junk. It's just taking up CPU cycles, drive space, and making the computer take longer to boot.

We already have the ability to make calls via VoIP, Facetime, etc. Anything internet based. The vast majority of mainline domestic planes have internet and do not restrict most voice protocols. The only saving grace has been internet became so popular on planes that services like GoGo quickly ran into bandwidth and latency issues (Most planes share a single 3G gateway). That will change as upgrades happen.

Best Buy got rid of the C level staff that were associated with the old CEO/founder. The new CEO made a number of hard choices and focused on the fundamentals. That has lead to a significant recovery. The stock price has more than tripled and they are one of the best performing companies on the S&P500 right now.

Major point, the online pick-up is now part of check out area and not customer service. For years I hated using online pick-up because without fail I would be stuck waiting behind someone making the financial transaction of the century. I used to use Circuit City pick-up all the time because it was always ready when I got their. I found it less frustrating to use Amazon and wait the extra day instead of waiting in line. So it's a great change.

They making some good changes to the loyalty program. It's one of the easier ways of getting money back on purchasing rarely discounted Apple Hardware.

They got out of some really badly done deals internationally. The Cellphone Warehouse deal for UK expansion gave Cellphone Warehouse a cut of BB's US cell sales.

Certainly there is risk for them. If all the changes don't turn into great numbers for the holidays it could spell disaster. We'll know in a couple months.

A buddy of mine spent a lot of money earlier this year to attend a Red Hat convention and take the (Paid) cloud training. What a waste. While the training was hands but very simple. The trainer didn't know much more than the attendees and it seemed clear to all parties involved it was not ready for prime time.

The core issue I see is he went at this like some sort of game. It's quite foreseeable that an organization that has a major police force, courts and prosecution would use those resources to get what they want. Give them the rope and you leave town on vacation. If they didn't have the due diligence to ask for something in the exit interview that's on them. It's reasonable to take a vacation and have time to think after a major life event (like getting fired). Once you're out of contact it's reasonable to assume that one cannot be uncooperative if they were unaware their cooperation was being requested. When you get back to town reefer them to your lawyer. There's no reason for one to have any interaction with a gov't official once it hits the fan. Using a lawyer keeps one from taking actions and making statements that would land one in jail.

Tesla does a tremendous amount of the work in-house. This includes things like the class A metal stamping, battery packs and a slew of custom parts and electronics. Most auto makers warehouse pre-stamped body panels and parts. Tesla warehouses raw rolled steel and aluminum. They make the parts as needed. They have one of the most automated factories in the world so it's unlikely that an outside supplier would be able to do it cheaper.

While they do have a lot of things they get from other vendors, it's a fairly small list in comparison to most transportation manufacturers. In addition they have a relatively small number of products they make (including parts for other auto makers). Because of this they simply don't need SAP. It's a size and scope that you could do in-house. GM or Ford could never scrap their logistics suite and have a replacement in 4 months.

A lot fighting game fanatics swear by the Plasmas for big screen displays. The input lag on a quality Panasonic is 16ms, whereas the lag on a quality LCD is 30-40ms (substantially worse on the cheap brands).