Don't like them and never will.

That doesn't do much to explain why you don't like them.

Most I would do with it is wipe the HD and load BSD or other flavor of linux on it before I use the MacOS. And god don't get me started on OSX what moron had the idea of competley changed all the menus and the way the OS works?

First, BSD is not a ``flavor of linux''. Both are versions of Unix, and BSD is, these days, a container term that holds a number of other Unices -- FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD being the major current ones, although Ultrix and SunOS were BSDs before DEC and Sun decided to change tacks.

And MacOS X is a Unix itself. Or, more specifically, Darwin is. MacOS X is that Unix OS plus the GUI and other things. And it's not as if changing to another OS wouldn't also change your UI. And Microsoft did the same thing when they went from Windows3.11/NT3.51 to Windows95/NT4.0.

And Apple makes remarkable hardware. It's very stable. Assuming that the applications they need are available for the MacOS, I'd suggest all large installations go that way. You'd have much less work on your hands, IMHO. If you're supporting 30k iBooks, can you compare the rate of needed support to some other laptop you guys also support? I bet it's much lower.