Cloud Computing. The End of The Desktop.

Cloud-computing
What is the first thing you do when you get to your computer? What application are you on right now? Chances are the answer to both those questions is your web browser. Most computer users today hardly use the processing and storage capabilities of the actual machine and resort to the web for all of their needs. And why wouldn’t they? With services such as Grooveshark, YouTube, and Netflix for their entertainment, Google Docs for their work, and Gmail for their E-Mail, there is no longer a need for the desktop computer.

Let me clarify, the small population of people who do heavy editing on Photoshop, render videos on Final Cut, and other specific tasks, still need their local machine to handle running all of these tasks. That small population is however growing ever smaller. When we have YouTube allowing us to do small video cuts online on and services such as Avairy and Picknik to do simple image edits, the casual user no longer has to deal with heavy, complicated desktop software.  Google is one of the main proponents of this shift with their Chrome Netbook, which runs completely on the web. Taking the next step from “Netbooks”, the Google netbook does away with the operating system, replacing it with the Chrome web browser. The realm of online applications is rapidly growing, while desktop applications are slowly dying. Can you remember the last time you bought a CD from the store to install an application? Other than maybe Microsoft Office, chances are you haven’t.

Computer manufacturers will quickly realize that placing importance on hardware specs is not the future. There is a reason the iPad has met so much success. It is not because of the device’s astoundingly futuristic internal hardware. It is because of its ease of use, form factor, and quick accessibility to the web. These low-powered tablets and laptops will be the future because their low cost will undercut any traditional alternative, and when almost all of your computing is spent online there is no reason not to buy one.

People will argue that there will always be a need for local machines. But I believe that even those heavy duty tasks will soon be ported to the web. Photoshop already has their online web editor which could soon become full featured. And even video games which are at the forefront of the push for better graphics capabilities are being stopped in their tracks by two things. One, the casual gamer audience is growing, and they are consistently choosing mobile-phone, flash, and Facebook games over their more complicated, hardware intensive counterparts. Two, users can already stream games to their computer via services such as OnLive.  As the library of games for OnLive increases, the market for desktop gaming will diminish as anyone on a high speed connection can play games once only reserved for high performance machines.

The next generation of computing is rapidly approaching and the desktop computer no longer holds the central position it once did. We have already seen the near death of the desktop, monitor, keyboard, mouse setup, in favor of Laptops. It is only a short time until high performance and internal hardware are no longer relevant. 

 

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5 Comments

Feb 15, 2011
Chue Xiong said...
I recently bought a new laptop because my old one was tripping out and the battery life sucked. I searched on Amazon, Ebay, Google Shopping, and Craigslist for a great and light laptop for the purpose of school. I finally settled on an Acer TimelineX Aspire after countless hours of comparing many. Main reasons I chose this laptop depended upon the processor speed, weight, size, memory, price and battery life. I'm not sure if this laptop is considered a high performance/computing laptop, but for me it was an upgrade from my previous one. I did not care much for very high performance laptops because I did not need them and they were extremely expensive. Another thing is my laptop does not have a CD/DVD disk drive. I find myself never using it anyways, which agrees with your statement about everything becoming download-able online. I also contemplated if I should install Microsoft Office 2010 because I use Google document and spreadsheet regularly. Google document and spreadsheet does not have all the capability of Microsoft Office today, which will make me install Microsoft, but in the future, there will be no need for a CD from Microsoft anymore; thus, disk drives are not necessary anymore. Some email accounts also provide good size storage space online replacing external hard drives. Many things will be hosted online in the future as innovations continues and whoever becomes the best at providing access to and making the most out of the internet will be the greatest beneficiary.
Feb 16, 2011
Michael Suey said...
Sanketh, I couldn't agree more. When shopping for a laptop for college, I decided to go with a 500 GB hard drive and a 1 TB external hard drive for backups and extra storage. Although I haven't had a ton of time to accumulate clutter and unused programs, I still have over a TB of free space. Music, videos, and pictures alone probably account for over a fifth of my memory usage. It's really cool how much memory they can fit in increasingly smaller spaces, but at some point, enough is enough.
I don't quite agree with your statement about the near extinction of desktop accessories. For a desk setup, external monitors, keyboards, and mouses are extremely convenient. The size of laptops just isn't that convenient when sitting at a desk.
Feb 16, 2011
Sanketh Katta said...
Michael, I agree with you on the computer accessories, I think I was a bit unclear in the post. What I meant to say is that old style desktops are being replaced by laptops. So I dont think monitors/mouse/keyboards will disappear, just that they will be connected to a Laptop instead of a huge Desktop.
Feb 16, 2011
Pedro Amaral said...
I definitely have to agree that computer hardware is becoming more and more irrelevant. The only application that I use daily is my web browser and occasionally a word editor. I've had my laptop for over half a year and have only used a fraction of its functionality. Of the 250 gigabytes my hard drive can store, I have only used 40. Who needs more than one gigabyte of RAM if all you are doing is surfing the web and typing up an essay? I regret spending so much money on a computer when spending half as much would barely be noticeable.
Feb 16, 2011
Jared Lucas said...
I agree that the world of computing is definitely moving more towards online computing. As you stated, so much of what we need to do can now be done online, and it is free much of the time. Most of the memory hogging files on my computer are media related, and now with more and more cloud based storage options, even that may one day become obsolete. As mobile devices get better and better, it seems to make that transition to tablets from a desktop and even from laptops much easier. Although, I think that it will be hard to to leave a non web based operating system. Something about having some sort of physical desktop and not something web based is comforting.

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