Peters: The Desktop or the Browser: Is the Netbook Escalating the Battle?

> - when you find you need a phone number at a friend's house

You have it stored in your mobile phone.

- when you upgrade your computer

You put your old hard disks in the new pc or copy everything including the os to the new
hdds. You have to do something even if you use wes apps.

- when you switch from your computer to your laptop
- when you find you need to try to sync your desktop and laptop

You know when you want to do this and copy the data on an usb stick. You use server
based synchronisation like e.g. imap, if you have an internet connection on your laptop
when traveling.

- when your computer crashes

You restart it. What do you do if the web server all your data is crashes?

- when someone sends a document that requires an upgrade

You tell him why this is bad and request the document in a sane format.

> What's the difference between sampling applications on your desktop vs sampling
applications on the web?

When you run desktop apps, you can see the source code and know that this program is
running. Your distribution takes care that programs do not do bad things, like logging user
data, displaying ads. Many websites are totally vulnerable to cross site scripting. You do
not need to upgrade to a unstable new version on your "production" systems, if you do not
want to. Nobody can shut the desktop application down in order to tell you "If you want to
continue using it, pay us $$$".

> Simple, the web won't make your computer unstable, and web pages can't force
themselves into your bookmarks.

Web pages can *easily* make the computer unstable. I have seen websites which do this
unintentionally on every slow computer, which can run normal applications fine and do
not have trouble displaying sane websites.