It must have been late 1995 (I don’t recall exactly) when Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, visited The Netherlands. I think it was right after the introduction of Windows 95. Back then I was still working as an online journalist for RIV.NET1, the online channel at Riverland Networks (this later turned into Netcast and after that into Lost Boys business solutions, part of Lost Boys/Icon Medialab). He was promoting something called the “NC” or simply “Network Computer“. According to Ellison, the network computer would soon take over from desktop PCs, and many users would use applications loaded via a network instead of having to own a local copy. So far, this has not happened, and it seems that the network computer “buzz” was either a fad or not ready to happen.
Well folks, with the advent of Web 2.0 or Rich Internet Application’s (RIA’s), I do see some truth in the NC. Basically a Network Computer is a lightweight computer system that operates exclusively via a network connection. As such, it does not need storage such as a hard disk drive – it boots off the network, but it does run applications locally, using its own CPU and RAM. As you might have noticed a lot of Web-companies (Google for instance) are now offering all kinds of applications online. They are mainly applications like spreadsheets, wordprocessors and online e-mail and agenda’s, but also planning tools and hour-sheets. The big advantage: you always have the latest version, there are always backups and you can use them anywhere where you can go online and just have a browser. Pretty neat!
But now you can also see demo’s for what I would call a ‘virtual operating system’. You can try them here:
www.youos.com
www.virtualos.net
I think that YouOS looks the best, especially when you set your browser (Windows only folks, sorry!) to full screen with F11. It really does a nice job.
All in all I really think this is an interesting development and I can even see how there would be a market for this. Except for one tiny flaw. A flaw that Larry Ellison discovered himself too: if there is no connection, there is no Network PC.
Ps: if you like to emulate Mac OSX on your XP, take a look at Flyakite OSX. Pretty neat…