ArsTechnica is reporting, "Apple has partnered up with Orange to rent MacBooks along with a 1 Mbps connection for just €60 per month, or €2 a day (which, according to my little currency widget, translates to about $2.65 today)."

When I worked for Jeffery Huberman at Bradley, he'd often complain that he wanted his computing experience to be more like his refrigerator... offering the reliable service of computing when he opened the door. I think this is what most users want and something Apple has been trying to give them. Jackie has upgraded her laptop 3 times from a 15" 400MHz G4 > 12" 1.3GHz G4 > 14" 2GHz Core Duo MacBook. Apple's Migration Assistant and the ability to boot in Target Disk Mode has made moving her files and applications easy each time.

Moving files and applications from one Windows computer to another is a pain. They don't connect easily. And even if you can get the new and old computer networked, there is no easy way to migrate users from one machine to another. AFAICT, there is no easy way to move files from a local user to a network user. If you are the local admin of a machine and that machine is added to Active Directory, shouldn't there be a way to merge user directories with the same user names?

Ripping off Apple's Workgroup Manager icon should leave little doubt that Microsoft is looking to Apple for inspiration. Where is the Microsoft Migration Assistant to help me move users to their new Vista capable machines?