When less is more

My productivity has been at about zero for the last three days. Granted, that's not a steep decline, but it is a decline.

I got my new MacBook Air. The one with the solid state hard drive. And I've been moving files, downloading programs,  tweaking settings, and generally just getting the thing all tricked out before I head to NECC on Friday. What a pain in the ass. (OK, my move to the cloud is taking longer than I had anticipated.)

This must be about the twelfth computer I have personally owned - starting with an Apple IIe back in 1984. The list has included Apples, Macs, PCs (even ones with the C prompt), desktops and laptops. Each getting better and better.

This is first time however that I have gone down in "feature sets." My previous MacBook had a faster processor, larger hard drive, a CD/DVD drive, and lots more ports. It was a dependable workhorse, no question.

What I find notable about the Air is what it does not have - no mechanical hard drive, no firewire, no CD/DVD drive built in, no separate Ethernet port, a little slower processor, and only one lonesome USB port. The reviews I read were not overly kind to this machine because of this.

But personally, I think this is an evolved machine - one that recognizes that wireless, not wired, connectivity is the reality. And it is rugged, very light, and feels faster than the machine with the faster processor. (Maybe it is the flash storage?) I don't remember the the last time I use the CD/DVD drive on my last computer, the firewire port except for the external back up drive that also had USB ports, or an Ethernet cable when not at my desk at work. My computer goes pretty much everywhere with me - throughout the district, home each night and on lots of trips. Dropping those few extra pounds is a real blessing in the way I use a computer.

As I see some "features" going away, I think about how nervous I was about buying computers that lacked a floppy disk drive, a serial port, a SCSI connection and a modem. When is the last time you missed any of those things?

 From the porch, over looking the lake, taking in the Air.

Could you live in the cloud?

I've been giving serious consideration to trying to move to totally cloud-based computing - in other words, trying to use applications and file storage only on the Internet with nothing on my computer's hard drive except a web browser.

Why try this? It would nice to be able to work on any project, anywhere regardless of the computer one is using. Any likely 1:1 computing scenario in our school would probably involve students getting low-cost netbooks that will use cloud-based apps and file storage. I would like to see about lowering my personal hardware computing costs by using an inexpensive netbook (that is lighter and has more battery life than my MacBook as well). I'd like to lower the potential "cost" of my loss of both physical and intellectual property should my computer ever be lost or stolen. And hey, and what else to I have to do?

I don't think it is going to be as difficult at might first appear.

I would rank these as my Top Seven computer uses:

1. E-mail. Both my school Outlook and my personal Gmail accounts already have robust online e-mail clients. My biggest challenge would be moving all my saved e-mail from my hard drive-based Entourage client to my online Gmail account and then tagging all that old e-mail so I can find it again. (I have a folder mind, not a tag mind, I'm afraid.) GoogleMail can now be used off-line in conjunction with GoogleGears.
2. Web searching and bookmarking. I already have a delicious account so I'd just need to reimport the bookmarks now saved in my current browser.
3. Word processing. After years of using Office, I believe I need to move to GoogleDocs for this, and the next two applications. I need to see if these programs are sufficiently full-featured and robust. While the WP seems fine for writing short pieces, will it be practical for writing a book? The presentation program lacks animation, transitions, and in-program image editing - which may not be a bad thing. With the advent of GoogleGears, I can work on stuff even when I don't have an Internet connection.
4. Presentation creation. See #3.
5. Spreadsheet use. See #3.
6. Photo storage and editing. I've been storing my best pictures in SmugMug (a commercial photo storage site) for years. I have a lot of pictures that still need to be moved there. I know there are a number of online photo editing programs, including an online version of Photoshop. I have no experience using these. I suspect it would be more cumbersome moving pictures from my camera, organizing and arranging them, and posting them online without the help of iPhoto.
7. Web page editing and webmastering. My personal blog, wiki, and website are already completely managed via an application service provider who uses online tools for management and editing. As does our school website. As do the professional association websites I help manage - Kiwanis, our lakes association, our state library/tech association, etc.

I believe I would still need clients for these applications:

• Antivirus and anti-spyware apps
• Adobe or other PDF reader
• My DropBox
• iTunes (to manage my iPod apps)
• Mozy (to do online file backup)
• SecondLife
• Skype

and little helper apps like:

• Flash
• Quicktime and other movie players
• File compression/decompression programs

I also recognize that were I ever to try to edit video, I'd need a full blown computer and I wouldn't be using CDs or DVDs. (When are they going to start selling movies on flashdrives do you suppose?) I use Mozy for off-site file storage, but I don't know if that is a practical solution for storing documents to which I want easy access.

So what am I forgetting, readers more techie than I? Can it be done? Is it doable but impractical?

Can my virtual life be spent in the clouds?

Image from: rdn-consulting.com