@Nathan yeah, until things are more stable and connections ubiquitous a hybrid model seems necessary and possibly always will be.

I have seen some articles about this phenomenon but not recently and I just threw this post up on impulse. If I come across any (or if you do) I will add them to the post. Smarter people than I have written about this before.

You're absolutely right that there is a trend away from PCs and toward terminals. The big questions are: a) is the bandwidth present to do what I want, b) what about privacy/security, and c) what if my internet connection disappears, will I still have my data? The answer is probably somewhere in between -- that is, a hybrid model with local storage and horsepower that's always connected.

You might also want to pull in some links to other articles addressing this topic. You're far from the first to notice the pendulum swinging back this direction.

I think that someone will try to tightly integrate OS and browser again, so it is not necessarily browser vs. OS. It will be transparent, as facilitated by software like Gears. As far as I can tell without owning a cell phone, portable device operating systems are already closing in on such a set up.

Of course, this by no means rules out the possibility of the desktop PC continuing as it is, but with the browser->gears-like thing->OS becoming more ubiquitous, in such a way that all may be chosen separately.

I foresee tons of user confusion initially when this becomes common. Imagine explaining that their documents live on the cloud, but not all files do, even with file types that serve nearly the same purpose. For example, plain text files and full-fledged documents might not both be on the cloud at first (if ever).

Interesting things coming.

@Chris I hadn't even thought about mobile internet in this post. That throws a whole new element in.

The mobile OS may even be more internet centric. Keeping your life synced across computers and devices.