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Public Council Teleconference: Application Rationalization — Hidden Costs and Smart Decisions
November 17 at 11:00 am US/Eastern (GMT-5)
Join Honorio Padrón, of The Hackett Group, who will share the drivers for companies to tackle application rationalization and the results of research that define the hidden cost of complexity. Additionally, we will discuss key decision milestones—to start or not, holding the course steady and fulfilling expectations.
Virtual Desktop Cost-Benefit Analysis — Michael Jacobs, Catlin Group
The analysis contained in this presentation measures the cost of everything from the machines and licenses to the infrastructure for virtual vs. traditional desktop environments.
Honor your best senior team members - Apply for the CIO Ones to Watch Award
Get well-earned public recognition for your top up-and-coming team members, your IT organization and your enterprise. Award winners will be announced, publicized and feted in May 2010, great timing to help attract new IT recruits to your company.
Learn more about the CIO Executive Council »May 29, 2009 — Macworld —
You'd think that Apple's legal issues with Psystar over the sale of generic hardware running Mac OS X--and the clone-maker's subsequent bankruptcy filing--would have scared off any other company from picking up that business model. Of course, you might also think that "Bing" is a great name for a search engine. But I digress.
As our former Macworld colleague Jim Dalrymple reports at CNET, Psystar's woes haven't discouraged newcomer Quo Computer. Not only does the company plan to start selling Mac clones on June 1, it plans to do so from its very own brick-and-mortar store in the Los Angeles-area, as well as via the Internet.
Quo plans to offer three distinct models at launch, and while pricing and specs aren't yet available, the company's founder, Rashantha De Silva, suggests the machines' pricing will start under $900. As to the issue of legality, De Silva says:
"[Apple] probably will (sue us)," De Silva said. "There are others doing this, but we have a different attitude. There are thousands of people in the 'Hackintosh' market, but many of them are creating bad products. I don't think anyone wins in that environment."
Instead, De Silva said that Quo will focus on making quality products and producing excellent customer service.
Of course, that sidesteps the real issue. In the Psystar case, Apple alleged that the clone-maker was violating Apple's End User License Agreement (EULA), and the same could be said for Quo, though the company will reputedly make customers agree to the license when they purchase.
Competing on quality seems like a losing proposition for Quo, given that Apple has always focused on quality itself, and the people who typically flock to clones are interested in one things: lower pricing. If the price advantage over Apple's own machines is only slim, it seems likely that many will opt to stick with the genuine article. And great customer service is well and good, but it's not much help if a company gets sued out of existence.