Harbinger

Here I would be discussing about the computer requirements of the hoi polloi (and not the ones who require special computing power to earn their money) of India.

Seeing the recent development like Waves, Docs and Skydrive , with previous advancements of streaming music and videos and blogging , the research has rightly been directed to the direction of future needs ( and which I think a person spending 12 hours daily in front of the computer would have realized himself.)

The news of a computer coming with an OS sans everything but an internet interface might seem to be quite a bold step , but vivisecting my daily routine , I could not agree more.

The browser seems to be the only process which runs on my system ( and we all know how pathetic we feel to get our PCs slowed down by the background processes of the anti virus and the updates , even the names of which are so difficult to decrypt.)

Seeing the IO presentation of the Google Waves , I see the new protocols transforming not only the internet business but in particular the OS business.
Anti virus companies now should move on from launching stale products for the PCs to server firewalls which are intelligent enough not to require any PC anti virus.
The only reason why Acrobat seemed convincing to me was for its markup and comment tools. With the incorporation of the same in Google Reader, I guess my need for it is satiated there itself.
For mp3s and videos , Youtube seems to be a great resource. I don't mind seeing a video in the flv format , Indian standards for entertainment , to the dissapointment for the makers of Blu-Ray , are not quite high ( which conforms to the rampart piracy in this part of the world.)
Internet and the browser is a necessity for the orkutters and the facebookers and the tweeters , which itself takes a large chunk of our time ( and still we do not see the community cult blooming in India).
For the office products for which Microsoft drains some $700 out of the pocket , Google Docs is a ready replacement.
Thus , in the future , we might see some hardware company( and a complany for profit) making computers which have only an internet interface , nothing more , selling laptops for less than a $100 , which still is a dream.
The requirement thus is to have the storage capacity for the huge digital footprint , which is growing like a monster everyday. Put your money into NetApps and EMC dear investors.
On the social front , production of the above kinds of laptops would mean a low power consuming device, which inturn would mean lesser of environmental sins commited.
What is required is higher, denser,faster connectivity of regions. With the telecom sector having already spread its coverage , not much of infrastructure would be required for bandwidth requirements.
I wish to see the days in near future of India where internet would be as cheap as that in the US.