Netsplit

Hmm it seems you aren't clear on the difference between a datacentre and the desk or what my term "creative type" niche means. I'm clearly wasting my time. Actually big business defines the PC. SME's have no say and take what they're given. The PC market is in freefall and isn't going to stop. BYOD is used a web client just like PC's are now. Not going cloud? Again wrong, in the UK many organisations are already all cloud. I'm in talks with a typical independent school at the moment. They are Office 365 and Google Apps. No internal infrastructure except to deliver specialist didactic software. This is not unique I can assure you.

It only extends within sales and management. They love shiny things. My last position was with the forth largest outsourcer in Europe and neither they, the commercial clients or the gov. departments they served used BYOD to any noticeable level. It wasn't growing either. Also there wasn't a single owned Apple asset in the CMDB that I ever came across, not one. Try writing a spreadsheet or presentation on a phablet. Say the word Apple in a tier one data centre and you'll be looking for a new job. It's not prejudice, the practicalities and costs mean there is no case to make. VMware is developing the hypervisor to take over the redundant O/S role completely. There won't be the pointless extra layer in every VM soon. Now then, on the desktop, the trend is actually to make a personal computer utterly obsolete. The future is everything to be Cloud and SaaS. When this work is complete the world will have gone full circle and back to dumb terminals. Web terminals this time rather than shell ones. You'll still need a big screen and keyboard for business though. In short, the future is no more PC's and no more O/S full stop.

Apple will continue to grow on the domestic and mobile market. However, they never will be a big player in the world of the workplace. That is except for a few "creative" uses. Like it or not, nothing integrates like Microsoft, nothing is as controllable as Microsoft. Kids need MS PC experience not niche kit experience no matter how good it might be. The business world calls the tune and future employees must dance to it. That said, I wrote this on a Linux PC.

No, one must account for software and hardware cache flushing, write completion, indirect connections such as USB and virtualisation drivers. Assuming that sending a format command to a NAS or SAN, which both have their own independant RAID Operating Systems, just once will do is foolhardy in the extreme. Secure disposal contractors actually literally shred disks through a mincer to save all the effort.

"Quick format" definitely does not zero a disk and all the data remains. Full format might but if I want to recycle a disk I use a military-grade multi-pass tool. Single pass just doesn't do a good enough job on personal data. Sensitive data should always be be encrypted anyway in which case it renders wiping unnecessary. However if speed is important, a 12mm drill will go right through the platters and circuit board in less than 20 seconds

A wireless HDMI unit ? A Raspberry Pi running as a digital signage server using Screenly?