The Darker Side Of The Post-PC Era

galaxytab10.1 "Tablets will replace PCs and everything will be great!" Don’t count on it.

The dark side of tablet computing is its overreliance on the cloud to do basically everything.

The cold bitter fact is that Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo!, AOL and anyone else that offers cloud services (mail, storage, docs, etc.) absolutely do not care about your data and never did. You are nothing but a drop in the ocean to them. If for example you got locked out of your account and lost all your mail, do any of these companies truly care? No. Your mail is gone and never coming back. Boo-hoo on you. After that you’ll be told by snarky nerds, "Ha ha. You trusted a free product. Ha ha ha." as if that makes everything all better. It obviously doesn’t.

Post-PC means tablet as far as anyone is concerned, and tablets are very cloud-heavy in the way they work. You are told time and time again, "Sync your data with us! Trust us! Everything will be JUST FINE!" All well and good until one day you lose data. "Uh-oh! Our server had a boo-boo! Your data is GONE! Sorry!" Actually, that’s being overly generous. You won’t get a notification and you certainly won’t get any apology when the cloud service loses all your stuff. You’ll take your trusty tablet one day, attempt to sync and *poof*.. data is gone. Oh sure, the thing will turn on and the app still works, but there’s nothing in that app anymore.

You will have to relearn how to backup your stuff

You’re a smart person and realize that putting everything in the cloud is a dumb idea, so you periodically copy things to local internal storage. Then one day your tablet doesn’t boot. Something went wrong. You don’t know what went wrong, but the stupid thing won’t turn on. After fiddling around with it for a while, you finally get it to boot, but.. it reset itself. Profile wiped. Your data is gone.

"Okay", you think, "I learned my lesson. I will back up my stuff to a flash card from now on." Now you’re getting it. That little flash card plugged into the tablet is physical media that you can remove at whim, plug into something else and retrieve data from if need be. Now you’re doing it right. Good for you.

Is there software for backing up data from a tablet? Of course there is; here’s an example. Yes, you have to buy it and yes you’ll have to learn a new piece of software just to back up your stuff, but it’s totally worth the 5 bucks.

Preparation for Post-PC means being willing to relearn computers again

There’s a fair amount of you out there that in 5 years or less will have a tablet and maybe a smartphone as your only means of computing outside of work.

"Pshaw! That’ll never happen!"

All I can say to that is never say never, and that once you do go tablet to learn about apps that allow you to use said device in a PC-like way. If you don’t, you’ll get way too cloud-happy and lose your stuff. Stay ahead of the curve and start researching your options now whether you own a tablet or not.

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David
The problem with Titanium is that in order to make full backups you must have root (administrator) access. Actually, not so much a Titanium problem as it is with manufacturers who refuse to grant the end user root access. Sure, there are usually other ways to get that, but the end user shouldn’t have to do that.
Devices either need to be easily rootable, or have a built in (non cloud) way to do full backups and restores.
David M
When tablets have 2 terrabytes of storage, have 1920 x 1080 worth of pixels and have the same power processors as desktops then perhaps tablets might be considered replacements for desktops.
Michael Crosby
Rich, you’re right. My problem now is I don’t know how to save the stuff I presently have in the cloud. Stuff like calendar, contacts and docs. Not only do I need to get my geek on, I have to learn some just basic stuff.
http://www.joomladesignservices.com Addy
Technology means easing things out. So the tablets out there are getting smarter after each launch. For the storage space in matter of no time they would be offering the same as PC did. Remember laptops was a replacement for PC’s and how they have improved over the years. Same is the case with tablets.
Genericmailstop2
The “post PC Era” is a lot of bull. My next PC is going to be a big old honking tower PC with Intel’s new Sandy bridge-e hex core processor overclocked to 5ghz, with liquid cooling, an SSD, a 2 TB HD, a 27 inch monitor, and 32GBs of RAM. The only tablets I use are called Tylenol, and I don’t want or need a “smartphone”. I have a “stupidphone” that I can only make voice phone calls with and I am very happy with it. I have no need to text, or use a screen the size of a credit card to do anything with other than dial a phone number. If I want to surf the web, watch a movie or play a game I will use my desktop PC. I have an attention span longer than 30 secs so I don’t have to constantly entertain myself through out the day and being as humanity has somehow, inexplicably I admit, managed to survive into the 21st century perfectly well without being able to have all of these billions of vitally important personal communications every second of the day I think I will survive just fine.
Angelsluv
I will never trust the cloud, there is something unsettlling in my mid with them, also it is forcing people to give up their freedom.. To make us give out our data to a company.. Who knows, they can spy on us using the cloud and no one would know it.. Seems as if that would leave us with surveillance, and we are signing petitions to prevent that in other countries but are not complaining about what they want to enact here in the USA with “The cloud”…
The industry is insistent that everyone stay away from towers and have table,t but I will not have one until the day comes when we cannot purchase them or build one.. I HATE laptops/tablets, etc!!!! Guive me a tower!!!

Zavegalicia
Well…that is the idea. That is the goal.

Abraham O’Driscoll
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Abraham O’Driscoll
I very much doubt that the desktops will become a thing of the past becuase a large sector of the IT industry is very much reliant on Powerful Gaming computers I highly doubt people would want to start playing COD or BF3 on a tablet!
sight7
Hear, hear! I warn my less-tech savvy friends that ‘new’ tech is not necessarily ‘better’ tech…trust the cloud completely at your peril.