Replace Your Boat Anchor

In a recent article, I asked the question, "Why Do We Have Personal Computers?" The article dealt with the frustrations of dealing with Windows-based computers (yes, now all you superior Mac users can stand and jeer and claim you never have any problems with your transcendently fabulous computers; at least one guy begs to differ.)

Yes, at least once a day I threaten to drop-kick my laptop into the garbage can. But what are you going to do? With 98 percent of the installed base of personal computers, Microsoft owns you, right? Or do they?

You see, there are starting to be alternatives to the Microsoft hegemony (lots of Linux geeks stand up now and shout, "Linux on the desktop!"; yeah, just as soon as you fix your stupid user interface so that it doesn't require intimate familiarity with Linux command-line arcania: ps –aux | grep doodoo.) Yes, once upon a time, there was a Linux PC sold at Wal-Mart. And now there isn't.

The problem is: computers are too hard to use. And while there's little you can do to avoid having to learn the details of, say, how to reformat text you've cut and pasted from another Word document, there is something you can do to simplify your life: get thin.

The term thin client computing refers to a method of computing that splits tasks between a local, light-weight device and a remote server. The two are commonly connected by the Internet, but the connection could be any network.

The advantage of thin client computing is that you can leave all the tiresome software updating, operating system updating, driver installation, data backup/restore, and other arcane computer management tasks to experts at some remote data center. Most of the software you will use in thin computing resides on the remote server and is managed by experts. You merely load all or portions of the software into your thin client as you need to use it. Your thin device may have a hard drive for local storage, and you may connect peripherals like a scanner or an iPod to it, but in general, the thin client device doesn't need to be hugely powerful.

As I mentioned in the previous SNS, thin client has made at least one run at mass acceptance years ago. The problem then was its backers tried to push it as an initial cost savings rather than as a concept that will save you hassles and maybe money in the long run. Several years ago, thin client vendors developed the NetPC specification, targeting a sub-$1,000 device. Well, take a look at your Sunday newspaper ads and you'll see you can get a sub-$400 personal computer at your choice of stores.

But instead of using that $400 PC to host all sorts of software, and risk incompatibilities, security breaches, excessive rebooting, and lots of headaches, why not save yourself the hassle and rent the software instead?

This was the idea behind another concept that surged into prominence about six years ago: the Application Service Provider (ASP) which has spawned a related concept, Software as a Service (SaaS). ASPs were all the rage around the turn of the century, and I've written about them in the past with varying degrees of enthusiasm. To be sure, there are very successful ASPs currently. Perhaps the most successful and visible ASP is salesforce.com, which provides a broad suite of sales management applications and features, all hosted remotely and accessible via browser all over the world.

Why did salesforce.com succeed where others have failed? By targeting sales folks, that's how. Sales people have a skillset that is almost diametrically opposed to the geek skillset. They are the anti-geek material that the universe needs to avoid disturbances in the force. If they are not on the phone selling or selling in person, they better be preparing to do so, or they won't be successful. So they don't have time for crashes and incompatibilities and data losses. And they don't have either the time or the temperament to learn complicated programs.

So salesforce.com made an easy-to-use sales support application that requires no installation and is always available at any Internet-connected PC worldwide. Genius.

There are many other ASP applications that a person wanting to leave their boat anchor behind can use, including:

Securesheet
Jedox
BadBlue

WebOffice
XO Office
Zoho Virtual Office
IBM Workplace

PresenterNet
InstantPresenter
HostPresentation

Tons of free Webmail:

Yahoo, Google, Excite, Netscape

Hosted Microsoft Exchange:

Unplugged Cities
US Internet

NetSuite
Authoria
RightNow
Salesforce.com

Too many to list, including massively multiplayer games like:

Battleground Europe
Dark Ages
Final Fantasy XI
Guild Wars
Lord of the Rings Online

And that's exactly what my business partner and odds on favorite to replace Microsoft as the company people love to hate, Google, seems to be thinking. Recent reports (and also here) speculate that Google will soon release either a Google PC, or a Google Cubes — a small hardware box plays songs, videos and other digital files on TV sets. Further speculation contends that Larry Page, Google's co-founder and president of products, will show off a Google computing device at his keynote address Friday (1/6/06) at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

ZDNet writer David Berlind speculated months ago that a Google PC is not a new or unexpected concept:

It's a network computer with a few extra bells and whistles to support things like Google Talk. It looks feels, and smells like a svelte network computer but has 95 percent of the functionality of the PC that took me where no man should go last week.  It can do everything a business PC can do because, hey, guess what: all our business apps can be SaaSyized anyway. But, at the end of the day, the Google PC (or maybe Yahoo will beat them) isn't much more than what today's cable boxes and cell phones are: remarkably thin clients (given what they do) that are customized to take full advantage of all that service provider has to offer. Oh, and produced in partnership with "the carrier."

So let's see what happens on Friday at Page's address. It could be the birth of a whole new way to compute.