The PC is Dead!

Apple Insider is echoing an IDC report that was published recently which essentially indicates that PC sales are circling the drain thereby confirming for us that the long heralded age of Cloud Computing and the Netbook are for real.

This does not surprise me in the least! Cloud Computing is absolutely real and with the ubiquity of storage and bandwidth, the move to the Cloud for the user is the logical evolution of the computing experience.

Whether we like it or not, most of us have already been interacting in some form with the Cloud as a result of our use of web based email accounts. Most of us have opened a “convenience” email account with Yahoo, Hotmail or Google. In fact, many of us may use Google as our email transport of choice if for no other reason than its superior SPAM filtering. The simple fact is that all of these services store our data in some remote environment that is NOT local to our home or business. It’s cheaper and easier to allow Yahoo or Microsoft to foot the bill for storage and we pay the small price of ignoring the ads on the right side of the page.

The largest perceived downside to Cloud Computing is the potential abuse of the stored data by the services themselves or their agents. We’ve seen this issue in full motion just recently with Facebook’s ill-fated desire to expand its terms of service statement. I like the collective rebellion we saw with this new overreaching policy. Facebook wisely did a quick about face and all is right with the world once again. Regardless, I remember a similar argument being made for online commerce back in the day too. No one would be willing to transmit their credit card information in order to make a purchase, right? The internet will never be anything more than a play toy, right? A novelty reserved for propeller heads and academics, right?

Wrong!

The PC is dead; long live the PC.