Ipad 2 is out so .... (not a sale's thread) ;)

[Altitude]

@tomato - Not to change the subject but you mentioned cloud computing. I would say you should stay as far away from it as possible. It is not the wave of the future unless, like Google, SalesForce et al you have a vested interest in it. It sounds good in theory, but in practice it's a major fail.

Think about it - to be smart you should keep local backups of all your data in the event there is some issue with your data in the cloud. And if you think about it, having to keep local backups sort of invalidates the whole purpose of cloud computing in the first place.

Case in point - the recent outage of GMail that caused so much havoc.

It's nothing more than a tech fallacy much like Web 2.0...

[tomato]

Originally Posted by Altitude

@tomato - Not to change the subject but you mentioned cloud computing. I would say you should stay as far away from it as possible. It is not the wave of the future unless, like Google, SalesForce et al you have a vested interest in it. It sounds good in theory, but in practice it's a major fail.

Think about it - to be smart you should keep local backups of all your data in the event there is some issue with your data in the cloud. And if you think about it, having to keep local backups sort of invalidates the whole purpose of cloud computing in the first place.

Case in point - the recent outage of GMail that caused so much havoc.

It's nothing more than a tech fallacy much like Web 2.0...

No problem changing the subject, I think everyone knows that Apple has a sale on last year's iPad until they run out, everything else since those couple of posts is just us talking and as the OP I got no problem with the discussion going wherever ... thread is all yours, guys ! (well within reason, right PK? )

You're correct that everyone should have 2 backups on different media.

I happen to disagree about the future of cloud computing, but I would not store *everything * up there either just yet. For one thing, there is always a privacy concern that's not yet been fully addressed IMO.

But look at it from my perspective. At the moment, besides the iPad (and my phone) I have pretty ancient equipment around (desktops and laptop are close to 5 y old, maybe older) and I've been known to "misplace" a USB key or two, so I do leave some documents on the cloud on a permanent basis. I like to have them up there, so I can access them from wherever when I need them. Also, for sharing documents with others, it's really ideal, IMO. You just send them the link.

Of course, the cloud is only as good as your internet connection. If you don't have internet access, then you can't work :(

BTW, I have 3 gmail accounts, and did not notice anything missing. I think only a very very small amount of users were affected by the outage, but people were incredibly vocal immediately , "don't be Evil" etc...