My sincere condolences to a trusted old friend.

[nukecad]

2 hours ago, Andavari said:

As for a cloud-based OS the clocks probably ticking on that to happen, although thinking about not ever having to install a crap load of updates would be nice.

It might sound tempting to have a remote, cloud based, OS. No need to be constantly updating your machine for a start.

Of course your devices would still need some processing power if only for high end graphics and displays for some of the top games and other 3D graphics applications.

But it would be the end of 'Personal Computing' as we know it.

Everyone would have the same version of whatever OS they prefered. (Like Win 10 was supposed to work, but hasn't yet).
There would obviously be limits as to what you could tweak for yourself, language settings, some display options, themes, etc. but not much more.
Would we have the same choice of alternative programmes for the same task, eg. word processors? I suspect not.
Everyone would have the same anti-malware, firewalls, etc. at the OS level, so if something nasty did get through then everyone would be scuppered.

As you point out you will need a good, robust, connection 24/7/365, so city dwellers only - at least at first.

Of course access to anything 'the authorities' didn't like (or didn't want you to know) could easily be blocked at the OS level for everyone.

I've no doubt that it will come, probably sooner than we think.
I've no doubt it will be resisted by some, there are always people who like the good old days, or who want to be different for various reasons.
I've no doubt that there will still be a core of users with their own machines with the OS on there.

But I expect for the majority, who let's face it just want to use Facebook Netflix do some shopping and so on, it will be accepted as a good move and never mind the erosion of choice or control.

[Palebushman]

Thanks for some really great input and info Andavari and nukecad.

The advancements in the world of IT is certainly moving at mind boggling speeds, that's for sure. My hope is that it remains affordable for us all to stay engaged with for a few years yet,

especially for those of us who enjoy buying the components to build our own custom PC's.

Nice to have heard from you all and you appear to be safe and well too.

Will pop back again in a while and let you know how our old friend CCleaner is getting on without its umbilical cord.

 

[Dave CCleaner]

On 28/02/2019 at 14:18, Palebushman said:

has our old friend still got its umbilical cord firmly attached to that gargantuan server in Prague? 

The good news is that CCleaner recently got its own General Manager, based out of the London office with the rest of the Piriform team there. The bad news is that he's an Australian.

[Palebushman]

1 hour ago, Dave CCleaner said:

The good news is that CCleaner recently got its own General Manager, based out of the London office with the rest of the Piriform team there. The bad news is that he's an Australian.

What's bad about him being Australian? Some of the best IT brains on this planet come from here. Here is one of my old time favourites, an absolute genius for his young age. https://www.tweakguides.com

Since CCleaner, Speccy and Defraggler were taken over, it was the 'hair' that finally made up mind to abandon the MS OS and go with the more mature Linux distro I have now adopted.