Kingdom Keys Bookmarking Blog

Rather than being empowered with computing power at your fingertips wherever you are - you find yourself instead being reliant on some cloud computing setup where you lose control and therefore ownership of your data.

There is a disturbing trend in regard to portable touch-screen devices known as tablets - either the Apple iPad or those built around Google's Android Honeycomb platform.

The majority of software providers love to get you to sign up for some download which turns out to be a crippled demo version unless you part with cash.

In the 21st century you would think the major computing tasks of word processing, spreadsheet, database (ie contacts list, appointments calendar), filing documents (such as photos, audio and video clips) would be settled once and for all.

Instead you find that the most blaring feature of those tablet operating systems is the lack of a file manager.

If Murphy's Law is to be applied here it is when you are on the platform of some convention giving your speech that the notes for your presentation will freeze. They are being stored not on your tablet's memory but on some remote server. Any glitch in your WiFi connection will have you dangling in the ether.

The myth of synchronizing all your devices through some cloud computing server is just that - a myth. It is time you regain control of what happens to your data. You don't want to be delayed at boot up by some background task chewing your bandwidth and processing power just to check if one comma has changed between two versions of the same file.

You generated your data - you are the best person qualified to decide which version is current - if there needs to be several versions. This flies in the face of what a personal device was supposed to be. Remember those USB memory sticks people used to attach to their key ring? The idea was to keep your most important files with you on the go. Now let me ask: How many tablets do you see with a USB port to access that external memory? Furthermore do they provide the software to read AND write the most common file formats? Open Office was trumpeted as the open source alternative of choice to Microsoft's monopoly of the desktop. Have you seen a version of Open Office for the iPad or the Android? Why not?

Add comment