Applications from Hard Drive to Internet

There are plenty of advantages to using online applications rather than running them on your hard drive. Such applications are finally starting to catch up with software like Microsoft Office. In this article we'll consider why you might want to use online applications and take a look at the capabilities of what is out there.

I remember the days when applications were sold on floppy disks; heck, I remember Windows was like 30+ floppies. Then came the CD-ROM, more reliable and dependable, and offering more space; they were a heck of a lot more convenient than floppies. DVDs came shortly after that, seemingly not much more than bigger CD-ROMs. We have Blu-Ray coming now, but it looks like applications won't be seeing blue any time soon.

Software's next big leap is to the Internet. With more and more users jumping on the 'net, and download speeds ramping up, the Internet looks like the new hot spot for applications to hang out.

There are many applications already all over the Internet. Download.com is one of the biggest sites; it offers nearly every kind of software out there to download and install on your computer. This is great if you need a little utility for a few days and don't want to run out to the store to buy a $30 program that you will use for only a few days. But this still requires you to download and install programs and files to your hard drive to run them.

This article will talk about applications run from a browser that can be saved to a server somewhere, not on your local machine, and then pulled up anywhere with Internet access.

Why?

Why do we need online applications? Aren't they fine and dandy on our local machines? Well, technically, there isn't anything wrong with using Microsoft Office, or Adobe Photoshop, that you have on your computer. That is, unless your hard drive goes down, or you aren't comfortable laying down a nice hunk of change for these applications. Your standard office suite is $150 and $650. Walk into Best Buy or go to Dell, and you can buy a new computer for that much.

These online applications are typically free or a lot cheaper than the traditional software. Online applications also add something that traditional applications can't: mobility.

With USB drives now holding up to 16 and 32 GB, size really isn't a problem anymore. I could throw a whole install of XP with Office on it onto a single drive. I could carry around a USB drive with me everywhere, but do you really want some of your co-workers walking around town with your vital company financial data on a piece of hardware smaller then a stick of gum? Chances are that you probably don't.

With online applications, if you lose your password, you're not going to be in as bad shape. If you're dumb and keep your username with password, then you're in no better shape. If they get either your username or password, it probably doesn't mean much for anyone else.

The last reason would be redundancy. Sure, you could have backups of everything you do, and you probably do for your most important information. I work in client side support, and I have witnessed many times that your typical user forgets to back up their data until about 20 minutes after their hard drive dies. I have seen people with their research data at a medical university end up losing everything because they didn't back up.

Sure, there are a few bright people that have learned, but the vast majority of people still don't back up their data. Online applications can save data online, on their servers, and they are probably a lot more redundant. I'm thinking Google does a little more than Joe from accounting does as far as backups.

Label: Software