Cloud Computing has become a buzzword du jour among cyberjournalists. The term has been around for years, and, like Humpty Dumpty, has meant various things. At one point it referred to aggregated computers, working together on something vast like the SETI project, harnessing down time to probe outer space for extraterrestrial life. ("Distributed computing" is a more apt term for this.)
The CherryPal cloud is much simpler. (No ETs involved.) You plug in your CherryPal, which requires a mere 2 watts of electric power and a fast internet connection--and uses the old monitor and keyboard you have tucked away from an earlier computer. That's it. You pay for the electricity and the internet connection. Your CherryPal comes with access to "The Cloud." When it turns on, it automatically launches a FireFox browser, and you are poised to log in to "The Cloud."
This sounds a bit magical, and since I don't yet have my CherryPal, I'm relying on what I understood from the CherryPal engineers at a demo in July. The CherryPal Cloud is a very secure server, where there will be many free applications available for use. It's running on Linux, which is open source and free. (Also free of viruses.) The CherryPal has a large flash memory but no hard drive. You'll have unlimited storage in the cloud. You can also log into the cloud from other computers, and your desktop will look just the same.
Big question for me: can I live without software I pay for and gobs of disk space and CPU to store and run it? After thinking about it, I probably can.
The CherryPal is not going to replace the workhorse computers needed by graphic designers, architects, software engineers, web designers, and serious number crunchers. If you live in Adobe Creative Suite, it's not the computer for you.
But for most people, who use the web to send email, shop, get information, share photos, blog, and stay in touch, CherryPal is a good option.
In my current computer usage, I spend a lot of time in Google's "cloud," blogging on Blogger, following favorite RSS feeds in Google Reader, putting photos in Picassa, using Gmail. It wasn't a great stretch to imagine a more full-featured cloud for CherryPal. This made me content with buying a less powerful laptop than the one I'd coveted. I'm not a Photoshop junkie any more. Or a Dreamweaver web maven. I'm content to get what I have to say out there, using the tools someone else has created.
Is CherryPal the computer for you? Think about what you really do with your computer, and what you would need in the Cloud to do it. Leave a comment with any questions you have. More fuel for future bloggings!
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Thanks for talking about the CherryPal! I just joined technorati so we are linked there. I just posted about NComputers at http://cherrypal.blogspot.com/2008/08/california-schools-reduce-carbon.html I got nervous when they were talking about the small footprint and low energy usage of their Ncomputer device. It actually looks similar to the CherryPal, but upon further research, they are using it as a slave to a PC, which is set up as the host, so they are not going all the way out to the cloud at all, and it is only a local network. Still, an innovative idea, and I'm sure that the CherryPal will be able to be configured similarly. Getting quite an education on state of the art computing while waiting for shipment.
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