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Network computing returns -- yet again | page 1, 2
But some of the same traits that make the network-centric model so appealing to corporations raise red flags when you transfer them to home use. Corporate managers are no doubt delighted that network computers like the Sun Ray are incapable of playing popular PC games, since their employees aren't supposed to be squandering company time on such diversions anyway. But in the home, the hardware limitations that prevent most network computers from handling complex games are likely to turn off a lot of customers, who will favor low-end PCs instead. Of course, proponents of Web-based computing don't care whether you're using a Sun Ray, a $400 PC or a "screaming" Pentium III: Their idea is to completely divorce your work from your hardware. As long as your browser is connected to the Net, you're fine, and you can access your calendar, address book, e-mail and projects. That puts a heavy burden on the browser -- and in case you hadn't noticed, browser development, once the supersonic engine of Web change, has been largely dead in the water for a couple of years now. One reason I don't want to move my work life onto the Web is that I don't want to spend every minute of my computing life inside my browser: It's not fast enough, it's not adaptable enough, it doesn't provide as useful a palette of editing tools as my stand-alone applications and it still crashes more often than I'd like. Scott Rosenberg's column appears once a week in Technology The other big problem with the Web-based computing approach is a matter of trust. Do I trust the Web site offering an application like Web-based e-mail or calendaring to keep my information to itself? If the service is free, sooner or later the application provider will itch to take whatever information it has about me and earn some money with it somehow. Even if I'm not worried about privacy, do I trust the provider not to lose or screw up the data that I depend on? Sure, few of us are very diligent about backing up our own computers -- but at least when we lose data ourselves we know who to blame. When some little Web start-up loses your entire address book, good luck getting someone to complain to on the phone. The recent Hotmail fiasco -- during which anyone could access anyone else's Hotmail e-mail through a simple Web back-door -- does not inspire confidence in the Web-based approach, even when it's being delivered by a behemoth like Microsoft (which owns Hotmail). Microsoft itself has made it clear that if users are unhappy with what they get for free on the Web, it will be happy to transform its familiar shrink-wrapped software tools into fee-driven network-based services. In other words, instead of buying Office 2000, you'd pay Microsoft a fee to deliver use of it across the Net for a certain time period. Such metering schemes delight the software sellers with visions of endless streams of subscription revenue and an end to piracy problems. But they'll be a hard sell to consumers who still think of software as a buy-once product rather than a pay-as-you-use service. With all of these different strategies vying for dollars and attention, you can count on one principle to govern what succeeds and what's left in the ever-growing trash pile of technological dead ends: simplicity. Whoever devises a system that is truly easier to use can count on some kind of market. Sun has a lot of experience creating powerful, reliable, expensive servers that require highly trained personnel to run, but it has yet to show the world that it knows how to build intuitive interfaces for the everyday user. The Web-based computing companies are only beginning to figure out how to make their services as easy to use as the stand-alone desktop applications they're designed to replace -- and those applications aren't exactly models of simplicity to begin with. With the right design, either of these approaches could take off and make "the network is the computer" a fact rather than an aspiration. In the end the distinction between network and computer hardly matters: All that counts is whether it's possible to do your work quickly and reliably. But for now, I'm not giving up my personal-computer independence -- not until Sun, or whoever, can prove that doing so will pay off.
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