What is your opinion about future operating systems?

I hope you would have heard about cloud computing and cloud based operating system. The future of operating system is cloud based or web based operating system. First of all, cloud computing is like delivery of computing power as a service whereby shared resources, software, and data are provided to personal computers as a metered service over network.

In order to understand this, consider an operating system like windows that runs locally on a personal computer. When you install windows in a personal computer, you purchase the license and use the operating system for ever in your personal computer and the operating system takes care of managing all the applications and resources.

In the case of cloud computing, your local personal computer won't have any operating system installed in it like windows, instead there is a single cloud based operating system that runs on a common server. When you need to run any application, you have to connect to the cloud server, get the data over internet and then store the data back to the cloud server. So literally, your personal computer won't have any control over how the applications are managed, how the data are transferred.

Experts call this approach a light weight and easy way to manage data as the data are stored in a centralized computer. But, you need to think about its pitfalls. Imagine, what would happen if you lost connectivity when you were transferring some important data? In all cases, it would increase your wait time and dependency. What if the cloud server loses all your data? But, cloud based operating systems are becoming highly popular, probably to gain more control over personal data.

The future of operating system in 15 years is going to be somewhat in the similar lines. Whether it would be virus or spyware free is another area which we will get to know only when things happen.