[mickt]

"some motherboards are not capable of supplying enough power to their usb ports."

That's just lovely. At work someone ordered 2 western digital passports harddrives. They wouldn't work with any Apple laptops that we had (2 15in MBP, a 13in MBP, a Air) and would only work with desktops (2 iMacs). The box, WD's website, Apple's website all said these were compatible with any MacBook ... I suspected the problem was with underpowered USB ports. I even phoned WD's support (who were unprofessional) and couldn't get straight answer out of them, nor any useful info from Apple website.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions!

I never used a Mac until 1.5 years ago and I've been impressed with the quality and finish of the hardware, the overall smoothness of the UI, suspend & hibernate that work, AND a bash shell. And the ease in which non-Computer literate can use one is impressive (unless they've used other OS's for a long time).

But, the way Apple obfuscate information, and Bill Gates ... er I mean Steve Jobs apparent desire to lock users into Apple is disturbing.