> Clouds go down, your computer goes down So what? How much useful stuff do you think I can actually do at the computer without a net connection? (Software d

> Clouds go down, your computer goes down So what? How much useful stuff do you think I can actually do at the computer without a net connection? (Software developers are a little different, but even then there have been projects where a net connection is required to be at all productive.) Note that it would not be law that your OS has to be remote. Not everyone would do it. But it isn't even an option today. > There's no compelling reason to put the OS "in the cloud" That it becomes someone else's problem to maintain is a nice one. So that it is available to me no matter where I go is nice. So that it can be demand loaded as I use bits instead of going through a multi-hour install that installs everything despite me not using a lot of it. > .. one can RDP or VNC perfectly comfortably .. Only if the latency is low, and you don't do 3D graphics or anything involving large screen updates. When the process and graphics card are local, they can provide superb interactive response. (I have a long history with both protocols, and even hardware acceleration for RDP - still poor performance.) > How does not having a 1Gbps internet connection prevent this? I meant having more than one computer demand downloading its OS. And by computer I mean almost everything with a microprocessor. > .. multiplexed into a single display .. downsample .. reason to stream video from empty parts of the house .. I didn't ask "how can I compromise to fit things into little bandwidth". If I had a choice between one or two cameras at a time and low quality versus all the cameras and very high quality then I'll pick the latter. At one time 640k was enough for everyone. You could shoe horn everything most people did into that. But when given the option of more displays, more fidelity, quicker interactive response, I'll take them every time over compromises. > Everything from cameras to encoders to compressors to display devices are a bigger problem in this case That is all part of the chicken and egg problem. If the bandwidth isn't widely available then there won't be that much demand. There are other encoding solutions other than full "frames" - eg deltas only for random parts of the frame updated on demand at differing rates rather than having one frame rate for the whole frame. Eye tracking can determine the area to pay most attention to.