One of the supposed benefits of Web 2.0 is “Cloud Computing” — all our apps and docs will be stored on the Web. No more MS Office. Heck, no more Windows.

I’ve dabbled a bit with this.  I’m using Google Docs instead of PowerPoint for my presentations when I’m on the road. And I think Microsoft’s SkyDrive is great: I get 25GB of free storage. But I haven’t switched over entirely to the cloud. I’m using my USB drive as much as I ever have. (In fact, I recently upgraded from a 4GB model to an 8GB one.) I still use MS Office for work stuff. I continue to save bookmarks in my browser (and back them up onto my flash drive) instead of on Delicious.

Why haven’t I embraced the cloud fully? I never could articulate my reasons properly.  But Wired did it for me today with a post titled “Why a ‘Google Web Drive’ Won’t Kill Windows, the PC or Anything Else“:

“There are two essential problems with the whole cloud computing paradigm that no one has really solved. The first is trust. It’s one thing to trust your e-mail to Google, it’s another thing to trust the company with the entirety of your digital life. Forget problems of security and privacy, even the basic issue of server downtime leaves many people cold.”

Bingo. When we got our Mac 2 years ago, I toyed with the idea of saving $140 by not purchasing MS Office.  We could simply use Google Docs.  But what would happen if our Internet connection was down?  How would my son do his homework? So I ponied up the money for Office.  It was the right call.

UPDATE #1, 2/2: As if on cue, 2 days after I posted this, social bookmarking site Ma.gnolia lost its data, plus its backup.  Founder Larry Halff says, “I can’t provide a certain timeline or prognosis as to to when or to what degree Ma.gnolia or your bookmarks will return; only that this process will take days, not hours.”

UPDATE #2, 2/2: Royal Pingdom reports that video-sharing site Revver and personalized start page service Pageflakes have been down since January 29. You get the point, right? I’ll stop now.

The second problem Wired mentions doesn’t bother me as much:

“The other big issue with online storage is that, for most of us, documents like spreadsheets, word processor files and the other formats that Google Docs understands are not what’s taking up the majority of space on our drives. Is the fabled GDrive going to store and sync my 200 or so gigabytes of mp3 files? For free? Somehow I doubt it. What about movies?”

I’ve got a 500GB external USB drive that I use for my Mac’s Time Machine backups.  Don’t need no stinkin’ Web for that.

Submitted by: Dan Giancaterino, Education Services Manager
on January 28, 2009 - 3:37 pm

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