Bingo! I'm also from SLC and have turned down offers to relocate to Washington and New York because I know I'll have a better quality of life even if my salary is 10-20% lower. There was a great 2013 salary guide created by Robert Half that show the different rates for technology talent across the nation.

Dexpot gets the most votes on AlternativeTo.net, and they list a few other options.

I've used Virtual Private Servers (VPS) before, and agree that they are the way to get started. You get full access to the server, and so long as you buy a mid range package you should have ample power for a startup project. If your website traffic explodes then you can look at moving to a large dedicated server or to a cloud provider, but unless for the majority of websites those would be overkill.

I've written a blog post about VPS/VM vs Dedicated vs Cloud hosting providers before, coming mainly from an ASP.NET point of view. The bottom line is that you have to find something that fits your budget. And don't even think about hosting it yourself. If you really need to be able to scale quickly then Rackspace Cloud, Windows Azure, or AppHarbor are all viable options, but with the exception of AppHarbor they also all have a big up front price tag.

Anyone know how it compares in speed to iSCSI or a SAN? From reading the report it sounds like there is A LOT more going on, and I have even heard of people using multiple EBS volumes in a "RAID" like array for faster IO speed. Sounds like way too complex of a system.

Windows Azure Drives are like EBS but they are simply VHD files stored in Page Blobs (Azure's version of cloud storage, similar to Amazon S3) with local caching on each VM instance. I assume they have slower read/write speeds then EBS but seem like they would be much less complex to manage/maintain then a completely separate proprietary storage cluster. Does Amazon have anything similar using S3 or RRS for backing virtual hard drives instead of EBS?

iTunes on Windows can be very difficult to use. Some people find it easier to use C# to fix issues with their music library then work directly in iTunes.

Here is a Technet video describing EMET and here is the download url.

More details about the attack can be found here and here. The original paper indicates that it affects may common libraries:

While Microsoft isn't making headlines in the consumer market, over the last decade they have pretty much caught up with or surpassed the competition in the business space (ex: Java, Oracle, PHP, Amazon EC2...). They have however recently started focusing on consumers again with Windows 7 and Windows Phone 7.

And while Apple's per quarter revenue is catching up with Microsoft, in terms of gross profit Microsoft still has about twice the margins that Apple does, which makes sense because software is cheap to produce and distribute. The research and development numbers show that Microsoft spends twice as much of their profits (8 times the total amount) that Apple does, which also makes sense because all Apple really does is find new suppliers with smaller/cheaper/better parts.

The new Intel Sandy Bridge architecture is hoping to change people's opinions of integrated graphics. Anandtech got a hold of a sample chip that is expected to be released early next year, and they show that not only does it offer CPU performance comparable to older Extreme i7 chips, the new Integrated GPU performs on par with ATI Radeon HD 5450 which is a low to mid-range graphics card often used for home theater PCs.

Also the notebook/netbook models will have an integrated GPU that is twice the power of the desktop model that Anandtech tested, so they should allow you to play many 3D games at decent frame rates using their low to medium settings.

Chris Pearson wants some real solutions!

Apple does not pay a dividend, so an increase in their stock price and related market cap is the only value that investors can benefit from. Microsoft does pay a dividend, and is willing to give a percentage of their profits back to shareholders (sometimes in large chunks). While Apple has done well as a growth stock over the last 5 years they may eventually need to pay a dividend if they want to keep investors happy.

Apple's big run started with the iPod on October 23, 2001, about the same time that Microsoft released Windows XP. Since then Apple has release a bunch of iDevices, upgrades to their core line of computers, and a handful of other products many of which have been very successful in the consumer market. Microsoft however operates in both the business and consumer market, and saying that they have been sitting and twiddling their thumbs on their Windows and Office empire for the last 10 years would be incorrect. In the same amount of time Microsoft has released:

• 5 versions of the .Net Framework and Visual Studio
• 2 generations and 6+ versions of the Xbox gaming system
• 4 generations of the Zune music player
• 2 major desktop, 2 major server, and 4 Mobile/Embedded Operating Systems Updates

Not to mention large investments in online search, software as a service, and cloud computing. With the exception of their Online Services Division (MSN, Bing, Hotmail, advertising) Microsoft makes significant income from each of their product divisions and has more than twice the income that Apple does. Many of their business products are doing very well, and Sharepoint recently became their latest billion dollar sales product.

I will admit that Apple's products are more popular than Microsofts, but that is because they are tailored to the consumer market. Most business uses Microsoft because it costs less and makes users more productive. I personally think that the Zune HD and Windows 7 are great consumer products, and the Windows Phone 7 is designed to compete with the iPhone as opposed to the Palm OS for Windows Mobile, so it will be interesting to see how the next 10 years progresses.