That's all true but, incidents haven't stopped online banking, retailing, healthcare etc. Most of the breaches I’ve read about haven’t been works of genius hackers as much as a lack of pretty basic security. Companies learn, they get better – not perfect any more than our food and drug ‘safety’ or Toyota’s quality control, but better.

People (and companies) will accept a certain amount of risk if they perceive that the benefit outweighs it. The firm that sends design changes from the US to the plant in Shanghai via FedEx or flies staff around for meetings loses the edge to the one that does online collaboration and teleconferencing. GM, DoD, the power companies, everyone gets probed and hacked, but they still use the technology because not doing so places them at a disadvantage. The cloud also doesn't have to be on the public internet. Microsoft will be happy to sell Azure to companies that want to build their own private clouds.

Software installation is actually an argument for doing away with the heavyweight client OS. IT would much rather install on the server than deal with dozens or hundreds of PCs with possibly varying configurations. Think 'DS doesn't run on my system,' 'I have SR 3 and I don't see that,' 'Try updating your video drivers' etc. Whether the cloud is public or private though, I think that the main gateway will eventually be something other than a standalone PC.

Microsoft is in a bind here. They want to keep the traditional Office/Windows cash flow going as long as possible while catching up in mobile and devices. Win8 may be a dud but they're betting a lot on it, Azure etc. I still expect the desktop PC to last a few years and it may be a decade or more before thin clients become the norm but then I don't know what a decade is in internet years – and I could be totally wrong.

Personally, I too want to keep my stuff on my system, but I don't lead a modern mobile lifestyle. If I did, I might decide to make the tradeoff. I get the feeling that concepts of privacy and control may be kinda generational too. The current generation seems to be quite happy to share their entire lives with the world and they live on the internet. For them, the need to have a personal black box full of their stuff may seem as unnecessary as having a private diary with a lock probably is. Bah, I’ve blathered too much already and Opera has updated it self without my knowledge so I have to change a ^&*% setting while I still can – brave new world indeed!

Interesting take on Win8:

Microsoft quietly kills off the desktop PC  

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken