The University of Canberra, Australia I am currently attending has in the last several months moved to Microsoft cloud services for e-mail, and calendaring and it's a bit of a joke.

Being friendly with the I.T. department it's clear that the motivation was purely monetary related.

As from a usability standpoint, students hate it. Junk filtering is a complete joke and is a common occurrence for student to teacher emails to not be delivered.

Forwarding simply does not work as advertised, if you have a "Redirect to" and then "Delete" rule one-after the other it's common for the rules to 'switch' around and for the delete to happen first.

The services are constantly down for urgent maintenance, slow and buggy in anything but Firefox (some features completely missing, like being able to create mail rules)/Internet Explorer.

It's a big joke, and I can guarantee you that the USDA decision to move to these services would have come from the top ranks and I.T. made to keep their mouths shut regarding the decision, just like my University.

Where is the option for living in my parents basement you insensitive clod!

I can speak from experience as an Australian who has travelled a dozen or so times to the states such far.

The European system, specifically our Australian system is hands down so much more efficient.

In almost all my experience in the States not only do I need to reach into my wallet for a $1 note, but I also need to dig around for the coin which is just so inefficient.

With Australian currently, the majority of the time I can come up with between $1 - $15 purchase very quickly without having to dive into my wallet, and without having to walk around with a large amount of change.

What really irks me the most with the American system is just how much change I need to carry around, for such a small overall total of money on hand. My pockets would literally only have a few dollars in them, compared to carrying half the weight and half the amount of Australian currency that always adds up to significantly more money.

My opinion! I like to carry at all times around $5-10 on me with Australian money, which is only around 5-7 coins ever in total compared to 15+ US coins which is just annoying!

Just my 5 cents including GST!

What has Slashdot editors posting Apple stories got to do with my opinion based in a market that I actively work in?

My opinion isn't some by-the-edge-of-my-seat observation, I work in the Apple industry for a company that is *not* Apple. We sell Linux, Windows, OS X, and push the right solution for the job.

The simple fact is the Apple solution is now becoming a lot more relevant then ever before, people want their products, and to ignore this (and if you want, fight it with a better/more open product) is just plain ignorance.

I work for a predominate Apple authorised reseller in Australia in an engineering role, as a result I get to hear feedback from every corner of the landscape. From consumer sales, small business, big business, government and educational.

The iPad, and just the talk around it, I have never experienced in my 7+ years in the I.T. industry, and 3+ years in the Apple industry.

I have no hesitation in saying that the iPad has a huge chance of being the game changer, it's launch officially brings the "PC" into being a commodity device that anyone can use.

Hell, just today with my desk behind our retail sales floor. I've had an old lady come in enquiring about pre-ordering it, just so she can check her email in Cambodia. Schools are talking about it, business is talking about it, but the most surprising thing is that the older generation, the type of folk who see computers as these big, ugly, hard machines to use are not just wanting them, they are consistently calling us each and every day to find out the latest news on them.

Apple will sell these things like absolute hot cakes, and the rest of the I.T. industry is going to be left scratching their heads as to why they didn't come up with this idea sooner.

I might considering coming if people confirm they'll rock up, I've just moved to Canberra so might be a good way to meet feel Slashdot Canberians (actually, that sounds scary.. haha).