The future of computer usage

The very smart people over at Techcrunch came up with the idea this week to create an open source tablet PC with a meager amount of processing power and storage space. You can find more information from Techcrunch themselves over here.

Basically the concept is to have this tablet PC that can only run Firefox, connects via Wifi and has an onscreen keyboard. Firstly I think the lack of proper keyboard is a very bad idea and will be a deal breaker for most people. Now considering this is a concept I won’t harp on the hardware shortcomings but I will focus on the whole “Cloud Computing” concept.

In this form Cloud Computing implies that a user has all their data in a “cloud” or in laymans terms residing safely on a server somewhere. This is not limited only to data but applications as well. What Techcrunch is proposing to do is not actually that unrealistic at all. You can get an Intel Atom chip which is cheap, results in great battery life and most importantly is small, mix it with some ever-cheapening flash memory and suddenly you’ve got a brilliant device.

Again though I’m diverging and focusing on the hardware. In recent years software has become “net-centric”. Theoretically you can run your entire Internet life through Gmail, Google Documents and other applications such as Mint that allows you to manage your finances through a browser window. It’s not just productivity applications but games are also now able to be played through a browser. Currently in Beta “Quake Live” is the web version of the 2000 hit “Quake 3″. Now eight years ago you needed a disc, a powerful graphics card and a gig of hard drive space to run the game that now can be played via Firefox.

There is however a problem here….

Apple tried to use this model for the iPhone when it first came out but people weren’t prepared to use the Internet to play their games or use their data. The biggest issue for most people is what if there is no Internet connection? Anyway, having data in a “tech cloud” somewhere isn’t exactly useful for developing countries. With the release of the Applications store for the iPhone Apple basically said that this wasnt ready for the masses and if Apple isn’t willing to take a chance on a new style of thinking then you have to wonder.

Is Techcrunch going to succeed if they ever actually release this product? I think not if they release it in the next five years. The market is not ready for this and permanant, everywhere, Internet connectivity is simply not a reality anyime soon.

I still think the lack of keyboard is the killer…

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