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The face of current computing is shifting briskly. For lots of users, the accepted carrying a laptop around with all of your programs and data files stored on it and trying to keep it syncronised with a desktop machine is swiftly passing us by. At the same time, the power essential of our machines for most every day use is in fact dropping, not rising.
For most business users, move away from the office and it is still easy to remain in contact. Use WIFI hotspots and mobile broadband dongles for connection to the internet more or less wherever and you can have a mobile connection to your headquarters. This is fine conventionally for sending and receiving emails, but what of accessing files and software you ordinarily have accessible on your office PC?
The resolution here is to use a service such as gotomypc.com. You might have seen the advert. Leave your office or home machine switched on, get an internet connection and you can gain access to everything on that machine from everywhere in the world. It is truly the same as moving that computer and its hard disk with you.
But the problem here is that the machine must be switched on at all times. What if a cleaner pulls the plug, or you are wishing to connect to a home based computer that possibly you do not want to leave running for two weeks whilst you are on vacation. The machine might even halt whilst you are not in attendance or potentially you without prior notice need to grab a file from the machine, which you did not leave on?
I was reading a journalist's outlook of this dilemma yesterday and it makes sense. Basically, you centralise apparatus and resources. You then sign into a bank of equipment form any internet connection, do your work and then save it in your own file space. The central method looks after backups and data safety. As upgrades to the software come along they can be applied automatically by the provider, giving you safe computing on the most recent technology.
It sounds far fetched. But at the same time as I was reading the newspaper article my daughter was using a laptop and a mobile broadband connection to hook up back from our holiday apartment in Spain to her school in the UK to look at her emails on the school’s central computer system. Within this system, known as Frog, she can construct powerpoint presentations and more, even though the computer she is using does not have this software.
My experiences from her updating Powerpoint show without a doubt that this is not yet the response for everyone. Instead of simple updates to the screen which are processed quickly, the entire screen is passed down the internet connection. So Powerpoint slides grow to be painfully slow to update and watch. People wishing to play games on the internet are not yet going to find this resolution good. But for those needing to deal with and maintain data files, word documents etc will be able to benefit from becoming more mobile on their computers.
If you would like to know further about the latest developments in the internet and website design technologies, then call into our internet blog. It is full of helpful information plus marketing advice.
Written by Keith Lunt, owner of janric.co.uk for website design Merseyside.
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