Don't we already have "Cloud OS" - depending on what you allow and how much privacy/data you're willing to give up? With Windows 8.1 you can store everything in OneDrive with your MS account, subscribe to Office 365 and other services, keep all your data online. Or you can do it all locally, with a local account and everything stored on local disks. Or anything in between. An Operating System manages local computer resources, devices and filesystems. Everything else included with it is technically applications not OS. If an OS doesn't manage local resources and you can't store anything local, then in my opinion it's not an OS, but instead a thin-client system.
I see that the global trend is towards openness. Everything is going in the cloud. My question is: Where are our minds??? In the cloud???....C'mon...... people nowadays are getting insane about cooperation and this kinda stuff. I mean it is important to cooperate but don't forget to do your job and be on earth Where is the good old way of doing things?? Doing things in the cloud is like having your money in a bank account....me satisfies money cash on my hand
People are already being conditioned to accept this. The question is what is considered basic functionality and what requires subscription. I am already moving more to console gaming, I don't think it is going to affect me much, I can email and browse from a tablet, a day will come when all I need a desktop for can be provided by a thin client. Not saying I am a fan of this but the PC market is being forced to change and it isn't all MS's fault. Sadly the days of building custom PC's are probably numbered and more due to a lack of demand than anything else. FYI, a person can buy any console he or she wants for the cost of a top end video card upgrade so the gaming focus for PC's is going away, especially with the game vendors following the subscription model.
Don't like the idea of this at all, although I like the way Windows 8.1 has integrated Skydrive I don't use it to store ALL my documents, I store most of my files locally, I also prefer to work locally, so no Office 365 for me. I still mainly use Windows XP when I don't need to go online as it is my OS of choice. I don't see how a cloud based OS will work even today, since in some parts of the world internet connections are still quite poor.
Until internet is available anywhere for an acceptable price, this idea is dead. First they move to mobile devices with the windows 8 philosophy, then they go back to stick you to your home pc with your cable connection. Come on, mobile net prices are still out of the window! Once I made the mistake of setting up a google account on an android phone without connecting to wifi, and it cost f....ing 10 euros. I wonder how many people will use this on laptops. Not many I guess.
If MS really goes ahead with Windows Cloud would it be possible by MDL members or others to create some solution or workaround so we could use Windows offline with all features? How you see this?