fellowleo

December 13, 2010 at 4:01pm

Anyone remember the good ole days when everyone used terminals rather than PCs? Other than the base OS for booting, all the apps were sent to your terminal from a server. This is exactly the same thing except that the graphics are better.

We moved away from that technology in favor of desktops because in the end, the network couldn't handle the ever more complex apps that the desktop could use. The same reason exist now. Until the IT side can keep up with the software side, we'll still rather install programs on the desktops rather than access a stunted web version of the app.

lhatten

December 13, 2010 at 2:43pm

Some good comments were expressed here.  Right now, and in the foreseeable future, working on large files will not be feasible. 

The other fly in the ointment is the security/availability of your data.  Even if the data is encrypted, do you really want to trust you most basic company/personal data to the web?  Then what happens if the hosting service goes belly up?  What if they give you no warning, just shut down?  What happens if you are in negotiation with some client and the net (or your connection to it) goes down and you are not able to access your data?  What if your competitor could print it from a PC & fax it?

These are just some of the scenarios that can (and I predict will) happen.  If I owned a company, and observed that my competition was moving to the cloud, I would encourage them to make the move & soon, then just sit back & wait for the inevitable problems and take advantage of them. 

Can anyone say mainframe madness!

QuadraQ

December 13, 2010 at 11:56am

This is a great new category for people with very basic needs and who aren't very tech savvy. But for the generation that has grown up with technology, this will never be enough for all of our needs. Nevertheless it is possible that it will eventually become the dominate computing platform in terms of raw numbers.

bling581

December 13, 2010 at 11:16am

I think that all these companies making such bold claims are only doing it for the publicity. Anyone with half a brain knows that online computing will never replace home computers, especially since the internet providers aren't doing much about upgrading the speed of home lines.

Belboz99

December 13, 2010 at 10:43am

I think using a web-based OS is fine and all for those that have simple needs, email, office, surf, etc.   And perhaps you could get along with a streaming gaming service like OnLive for gaming, but what about actual productive work?

I've got a DSLR which takes 14.5 megapixel images, I shoot around 300-500 RAW images monthly, each image weighs around 10MB.  I then convert these images on the RAW image suite Capture One 5 Pro, by Phase One, and store the JPEG's (around 8MB each @98% quality) on my server, which then gets backed up onto an external HDD.

In a single day I might shoot 200 photos if there's an event. That's 2GB of images easily in just the RAW format.  Am I supposed to even consider uploading 2GB of images up to the cloud before they can be processed, and how am I supposed to process them once on the cloud?  Do I really want to trust the cloud with my life's work, or do I then have to pull them back down from the cloud as JPEGs and back them up?

And that's some of the more common type of work I do, what about using a Nikon Coolscan V dedicated 35mm film scanner to scan slides, negatives, etc, creating 22 megapixel images from 35mm frames?  Am I to expect that the developer of the software I use (Ed Hamrick's Vuescan) would make an app for every cloud-based OS, which can interact with my scanner from the cloud?  And what then?  Do I wait 5-10 minutes for each image to upload once scanned?  How is it ever going to handle preview data?

I don't think I even want to discuss HD video editing / conversion, that's just a silly notion entirely!

 

Dan O.