Google PC?

[Wombat]

If you were instant-on, then you'd almost certainly have to save state somewhere. That would mean burning out flash. No caching or tmp drives.

[Sasq]

Actually you can buy CF card adaptors that appear as a HDD. currently using one with a dedicated firewall box I am building up.

[az]

Wombat, what do you mean by "burning out"? Are you hinting at the limited write cycles of flash memory? I believe this is somewhere around 100k cycles (and internal electronics spread out the writes and replace dead cells with backup cells). If the were only used to save state when shutting down the machine, it would likely survive for longer than people will use the device. Even if it saved every time the URI changed etc. (to provide session recovery in case of a crash etc.), say, 100 times a day (this isn't targeted at power users, is it?), it would still last for ~3 years (and, like I said, it's not as if it writes to the same physical cells everytime it writes to the same filesystem sector).

Sasq: Yes, I think CF cards use ATA33 signalling and these adaptors are only physical adaptors, like DVI-A/VGA ones.

[cjolley]

If you were instant-on, then you'd almost certainly have to save state somewhere. That would mean burning out flash. No caching or tmp drives.

You still don't get how thin it could be.
Save the state on the Google servers.
Part of the "Boot" process would be to get the state from Google.
(of course, meaning not completely "instant on", but pretty quick if all the client does is pass display and sound data to the screen and send mouse and keyboard input data back to the servers.)

[Wombat]

I wouldn't encourage anyone to do that. All their passwords, credit card info, purchasing stuff, stored in a centralized location? No thanks.

[cjolley]

I wouldn't encourage anyone to do that. All their passwords, credit card info, purchasing stuff, stored in a centralized location? No thanks.

That's where it's headed though.
This isn't much more than an extention of something MS is even talking about.

Oracle even provides a service much like this already.
All your data is on a super administrated site(s) with db, backup, server, middle tier on their hw. You just provide the browser.

Not much of a leap to reduce the client from browser and supporting HW to Remote Desktop and supporting HW.

[az]

I don't think remote desktops over the internet are ever going to fly, when every click is passed, latency will always be noticeable. I also don't think it'd really be cheaper, the money you might save on the clients you'll pay for bandwidth and servers.

[Whirl-Secret]

Guys, thin hardware clients have been around for ages, we use them in my office fairly often. Best example = Wyse. You DO need a terminal services server or something similar though, which are not as common. Maybe you've heard of Citrix too?

A year ago I was chatting with my IT boss about the possibility of setting up a company / charity that would run a cluster of terminal servers over a fast net connection and then rent out these thin clients to schools with a nice flatscreen or whatever. Sigh I should have been a bit more proactive hehe!

[Whirl-Secret]

I don't think remote desktops over the internet are ever going to fly, when every click is passed, latency will always be noticeable. I also don't think it'd really be cheaper, the money you might save on the clients you'll pay for bandwidth and servers.

And 10 years ago noone would want to play games online either. Then Quake and Subspace were released!

[cjolley]

Guys, thin hardware clients have been around for ages, we use them in my office fairly often. Best example = Wyse. You DO need a terminal services server or something similar though, which are not as common. Maybe you've heard of Citrix too?

I don't think those are as thin as I am talking about.
Do they run on an OS, or do they boot themselves?

[edit] Wyse looks in the ball park. [/edit]

And 10 years ago noone would want to play games online either. Then Quake and Subspace were released!

Oh man, beat me to it.
I was going to use that IBM exec's quote where he talks about the market for desktop PCs maxing out a some absurdly low number.

[Whirl-Secret]

I don't have the specs of the system I have at work, but basically it's a silent little chocolate-box size machine with 2 usbs for keyboard and mouse, d-sub out, network connection and a power cable. It uses some sort of Linux to power up but it has hardly any RAM and no hard disk. The only options are for connection type and speed, and monitor res, then point it at a server and it works like Remote Desktop Client. To be honest I mainly use it when someone's client PC dies and I have to give them mine (grr I have the only socket 939 PC in the company!) But it does work well. It also works fine over our 256kbit ipclear WAN links - low hops and contention ratio of 1:1 but still reasonably similar to many people's internet connection these days - I think Google (or someone else) could pull this off.

[Nowhere]

Especially together with lots of dark fiber they have and (still rumored or is it a fact?) portable datacenter.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yes, Google has been buying up dark fiber by the truckload for about a year.

The first articles appeared about this time last year when they put up a job posting for a strategic negotiator "with experience in...identification, selection, and negotiation of dark fiber contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network".

Not too subtle

They've also been buying up IP-over-power companies etc. etc. etc.

By the time they're done much of the bandwdith excess will be theirs, and from what the financial anaylists are saying companies like Comcast are none to happy about it.

Dr. Mordrid