Apple MacBook Air

I've been using a MacBook Air for a couple weeks now, and I'm quite delighted with it. It's like the perfect balance between portability and usability. It's so thin and light that it practically disappears in a briefcase -- particularly if you're accustomed to toting a regular laptop around. With 5 hours of battery life, it's pretty easy to take into a meeting with you, and I hardly ever use paper anymore. The 13.3" (diagonal) screen has a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, which is quite usable, and the keyboard is full-sized with good tactile response and back-lit keys that are sensitive to the ambient light levels. The touch pad is excellent, so I don't even use a mouse with it. I went ahead and got the external DVD drive and Ethernet adapter. They're nice to have when you need them, even though they stay in a drawer most of the time.

This MacBook Air comes with a dual-core 1.6 GHz CPU (having two CPUs is wonderful), 2 GB of RAM, and an 80 GB hard drive. I got spoiled on a 17" MacBook Pro over the last 9 months, so the Air seems a little under-powered by comparison, but it's fine for what I do most of the time, which is run a web browser and basic productivity applications. I can still run Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux under VMware Fusion when I occasionally need to run something under those operating systems. I gave both Parallels and VMware a pretty thorough test drive, and I concluded that Parallels has a higher degree of integration between Windows and OS X (in the user experience), but VMware is far more stable -- especially with recent versions of Linux. I prefer stability; particularly since I usually launch the other operating system in a separate "space" and switch between spaces as if it were an old KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) switch connected to a couple different computers. The integration between Windows and OS X isn't very important to me.

Apple certainly knows how to design a usable product! The fit and finish of a Mac (hardware and software both) is like driving a Mercedes or a Lexus. It just feels like quality, with attention given to all the little details.

Enterprise Software Licensing

During the last five years, I've had an opportunity to compare two very different software licensing models: Open Source and Proprietary Enterprise. The proprietary licensing model introduces some peculiarities that leave the software vendor's interests not fully aligned with their customer's interests. I think you'll see my preference for open source below...

Pricing: proprietary enterprise software is typically sold with a big up-front license fee and an annual maintenance (support) fee that is typically in the range of 18-20% of the initial capital expenditure. Since the initial fee is so much more than the annual support, this introduces a couple peculiarities: (1) the software vendor has a bias toward acquiring new customers over serving existing customers, and (2) the software vendor has a bias toward modularizing their product instead of integrating it. By creating (or acquiring) new modules, the software vendor can upsell new products to their existing customer base. However, the quality of integration suffers -- especially if they acquired the module instead of building it into their product from scratch.

Open vs. Closed: the "open" model usually applies to more than just source code. The organization behind the software tends to be more open (and authentic) with their pricing, their list of software issues, feature requests, development roadmap, priorities, developer conversations, etc. The good people at Alfresco understand this completely; I think they're doing a great job of being a for-profit company based on the "open" model. Proprietary companies have hidden source code, hidden price lists, hidden defect tracking systems, hidden development priorities, and so on. At large companies like Oracle, they're even hidden to their own employees.

Support: if you deploy open source software in your organization, you'll probably rely mostly on your own internal experts. In contrast, if you deploy proprietary enterprise software in your organization, then you will probably rely more on expensive consultants and vendor support. Some executives get a sense of security by going with an established brand and by having a relationship with an executive at the proprietary enterprise software company. The thought is that if you know a ranking executive, such as a "Senior Vice President of Strategic Accounts" (doesn't that sound expensive?), then you'll be able to get the attention you need when you need it. In my experience, though, it really comes down to the expert who's tackling the problem and what information they have at their disposal. I get a greater sense of security by hiring and retaining really bright people who know how to take advantage of open systems. I think you also get much better value this way.