Up in the clouds.

The latest techno-buzzword is cloud computing - what the hell's all that about then? Well if you work in a reasonable size office, you're probably already familiar with the basic idea. You have a computer on your desk, yes? Well chances are, you don't - what you have is a monitor and a keyboard, which is connected to a big computer somewhere else in the building. All the programs you use, and all the stuff you produce are stored on this big computer, and what you and everybody else has on their desk is just a "dumb terminal" which you all use to access the big computer. OK, now think of that basic set-up on a huge scale. My computer here in my house, and everybody else's, become just dumb terminals accessing a mega-huge computer somewhere else - up in the clouds, as it were. You don't have to worry about buying software - it's all on the big computer. You don't have to worry about storing and backing up data - it's all on the big computer. You just access it (and doubtless pay for it) as needed. Well, that's the idea. Will it work? Well, probably in due course, but be prepared for some hiccups along the way!