replacement of personal computing could have thousands trading in pc's

[latent aaaack]

At first blush this seems like a radically new and great way to vastly reduce personal computing energy costs and excessive waste but I can see the risks that people will cite of so much personal data being stored in a centralized place. I'd be more comfortable with the idea if private companies would compete to offer the service as well, like web-based email and file sharing sites do. Can anyone more familiar with thin-client systems say whether individual users get their own low tech device or terminal and if not how sharing is arranged?

http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070611/full/070611-5.html

Throw away your PC
Power savings for those willing to relinquish control over home computing.


Household computers are under threat from a UK government scheme. But the programme, which involves trading in personal computers for low-tech access points and relying on network-based applications for everything from playing video games to doctoring holiday snaps, could help to save the planet in return.

The UK government has announced that it will be launching a pilot project for the scheme in Manchester in 2008. Details are still fuzzy, but the basic idea is to replace PCs in tens or hundreds of households with simple access points, perhaps in TV-top boxes, and establish a system of central servers to do all the hard work. The aim is to do away with redundant computing power by delivering processing power and storage as a commodity from a central source, the same way that electricity is distributed by a national grid.

Green Shift Taskforce, the organisation behind the scheme, claims that a typical household PC uses only 5% of its processing power. Such unnecessarily-oversized computers are known as 'fat clients'. "PCs are fairly complex, large machines that are massively underused by the majority," says Atul Hatwal from Green Shift. Its 'thin client' system, with stripped-down personal units, will save up to 98% of energy consumption, he says.
......http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070611/full/070611-5.html

 

[Upchurch]

We Americans won't give up our cars for public transportation. I can't see us giving up our computers for public computing.


(Personally, I'd love to give up my car. You'll have to pry my laptop out of my cold, dead hands.)

 

[geni]

It's an old idea people have been pushing for years. So far people have prefered to keep things local. A better aproach might be to have a single processing unit per household.

 

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Didn`t we have something like that in Web T.V.?

 

[EvilSmurf]

It will be about as successful as cars which are only capable of going the speed limit, methinks.

 

[Azure]

Maybe they should spend that money on developing better technology that makes home computers more environmentally friendly?

 

[Ziggurat]

Its 'thin client' system, with stripped-down personal units, will save up to 98% of energy consumption, he says.
......http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070611/full/070611-5.html

The display on a computer contributes a lot more than 2% of the energy output, and you can't get rid of that with a thin client. Thin clients are a great idea for things like libraries and public terminals, where people are using a machine other than their own anyways, but people want to own their computers, and thin clients can't offer them that. It's been tried before, it failed before, and nothing has fundamentally changed since then. This is a waste of money on the part of the UK government.

 

[Schneibster]

You'll have to pry my laptop out of my cold, dead hands.

And mine. I dunno, maybe it's that whole Revolution thing, but I always feel a cold breeze across my neck when I hear British talking about stuff like this. I'm aware of too many instances in the past when the British government of the day has decided to engage in some really gnarly piece of surveillance, stuff that until the New York Times ran a piece on the FISA violations by the current administration I'd have said people would never put up with in the US. I never forget that 1984 was written by a Brit, and he apparently had a pretty good idea of how his countrymen thought (and think, as far as I can tell). On the other hand, while there may be some real wild-eyed libruls in the US, the British variety I've seen are real short on talk and real long on getting the bread sliced; watching a liberal Brit slice into some ◊◊◊◊-talkin' redneck is almost more of a treat than watching them make an idiot of the local Communist. Of course, I appreciate dry humor more than many.

 

[Gravy]

I think the answer is more energy-efficient computers. Until those are widely available, the government might be better off encouraging people to donate their unused processing power to projects like Folding At Home.