Cloud Computing

It's all about the transfer of control from you to the cloud, which goes a long way to explain why apple love it so much. If apple could take control of the air you breathe, they surely would.

We're being sold a dis-jointed array of technologies, SATA 3, before most things can even get to 3GBps, 64 bit architectures when the software mainly isn't up to it and still prefers 32 bit , and graphics cards that burn a hole in your electric,as well as pockets, point being of course... this is good old fashioned choice and it's exiting to make a rig, do the research, figure out what you need and how fast you want to go

Whereas cloud computing, you've not made any decision really other than to log on to the specified service. That's bland and boring but more than that there's just no creativity.

Which is precisely why it's so popular. No point wasting energy or effort doing all that original, creative, intelligent stuff.

Just use what they dish up and don’t think too hard about nuthin’…

For most users buying a PC for browsing 95% of the time is like taking the Rolls to your corner shop. Total waste of of processing power, money and energy.

Its based on requirements and what one wants.

For graphics - design and games
For processing - numbers etc ok PC is kewl.

For data processing, email, browsing and simple presentations etc most working popullation it is excess.

Horses for courses...

The anology with Victorian toilets and baths made me laugh. Privacy is well over-rated anyway. Officials and undoubtedly some hackers can hop into any computer in the world at the turn of a switch. Even when it is off in many cases.

Best way to hide info is to make it available in abundance.

And the analogies flow so I'll try one - cloud computing is like trading! you buy your 'receiver' which I'll call the new 'pc's' off the line that do this and hook up to this thing, you hope or bank on it doing what you want to do, even improving what you want to do....but that mightn't be so, and the thing may go down hill as easy as uphill, especially as (inevitably) advertising revenue starts to creep in and people start getting remotely bugged by that tit from go compare et al, and are less able to do something about all the methods used because the tech is their side, not yours remember.... the promoters know this, the advertisers know this, and apple, of course knows this. Perhaps what we'll see is the internet turn into a monthly telly service, but you're stuck with what's on the box at the end of the day. And to be honest, for those that want that, good, they never had a brain in the first place.

I agree the hardware exceeds the software and also that the hardware exceed most people's heaviest use, but then don't forget gaming, if you want a stand alone none dependent gaming unit you need top end everything and that's not something a cloud can replace as if it's beaming your gameplay, and this has been significantly looked at, you get the sony scandals the credit cards, it's really simple, data protection is key and that's removed in cloud computing to at the very most a wholey unearned trust placed in your service provider

Back to trading though, quads and doubles and decent ram don't half make excel go faster, and if you're crunching numbers on an industrial scale, I think a high end PC is essential..........oh wait the cloud can do that too, and it really can, - many CPU's will outcrunch any stand alone CPU, but at least my way my personal data stays personal.

Seems most of you are talking about the personal applications of cloud computing. This isn't where all the money is. For the bigger picture - look at Salesforce.com.

Cloud computing is similar to the bureau services we had in the 70's where people would rent mainframe apps. It's hosting applications off site. Salesforece really got this going with their CRM software. Later they allowed other vendors to come in and develop apps on their platform and now there's a huge portfolio of business apps. I've been involved with sales management & healthcare apps on the salesforce platform. It's clunky as hell in my opinion.

Benefits are reduced infrastructure costs and being able to account for the costs of the application in a different way - application purchases are reported as fixed assets, application rentals aren't. Downside is lack of local customisations/flexibility. One oft discussed 'benefit' is that you can try for a few months first but any large organisation still needs to go through an implementation process to get an application up and that effectively ties them in anyway.

This stuff about keeping your files on a server somewhere is could computing but it's not where all the money is.

At some point, Microsoft will knock Salesforce.com off the top spot. The Microsoft platform is far superior to the Salesforce platform and I expect there will be a shift to MS because of this.

I will just keep my PC and all of my files encrypted, and I will continue to use Firefox with flash block and no script running.......That has served me well for the last 5 years or so.

Absolutely spot on.

Also www.service-now.com the best service desk on the planet with follow the Sun global access built in. Best value for what you get too.