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Have any web-based applications replaced desktop apps for you?

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iphigenie:
The main advantage of online apps:
- synchronisation between computers.
- works on different OSes, very nice if you mutli boot
- No need to sync and shuffle things back and forth trying to keep your notes / bookmarks / invoices organised
- lots of updates (can also be a negative)
- monthly pricing models add up quickly

The main advantage of offline apps:
- faster,
- functionally richer and more mature apps, on average
- way more choice,
- not everywhere has a connection!
- won't disappear without notice
- I am very keyboard oriented and webapps are usually weak at supporting keyboard commands

theres loads more on each side of course but got to stop somewhere

I still tend to favor desktop because most online stuff is a never finished beta, and I have little patience for a lot of the bad choices made. I am in the field of web development though, so I have very high standards and very little patience for the badly designed, half finished, functionally empty but slick looking apps that are all the rage...

Even "standards" like salesforce.com and zimbra are not as slick as equivalent desktop software.

I do love the webs apps that can be controlled via email though - sending an email or instant message to create an appointment, note, task, website post etc. is brilliant.

The only webapps that i use on a regular basis
- fastmail, but this is on top of my normal mail client, not instead
- link a gogo - this did replace my old bookmark convert/share manager which was GUL, but thats only cause GUL disappeared off the surface of the earth
- librarything - i never managed to get motivated by a desktop cataloger, but librarything pulled it off
- meebo is currently replacing my multi messenger. this is cause i cannot find a multi messenger which is stable and does it all, so i might as well not run a separate program and use my browser

suleika:
I use logmein too.  And I have a gmail account but I back up my gmail into thunderbird.

The supposed advantage of web-based apps is the freedom to move around, but in my travels (Europe mainly) getting regular decent internet access is not something to take for granted.  And it's not as if I would have access to other computers either, without having to pay for them, so since I need my own laptop I might as well have offline apps.

On an extended trip abroad this year (14 weeks) my laptop screen suddenly failed.  I got my smaller laptop from home to use instead - and the hard drive failed after two weeks.  All this time the internet access was spotty.  I pay for internet access in hotels and apart-hotels very often and about 30% of the time the service is problematic.

On my new Dell laptop I use as many portable applications as possible, and although I run them from the C drive (or Q in my case - my data partition) I back them up daily onto usb sticks.  With so much that I can't control or predict, this gives me the most freedom and flexibility for my situation.

Ralf Maximus:
One trend I find particularly disturbing...

There is at least one company out there (name omitted) that markets web-based solutions for government agencies.  Not for the PUBLIC, mind you -- I am all for online registration of car tags, etc. -- but for ENTERPRISE use by gov't employees.

The idea (how their marketers sell it) is that instead of devoting countless IT hours to maintaining big enterprise apps on local servers and hardware, pay us and we'll maintain the thing on OUR servers in far away places.  Via the magic of the interweb, your employees will have access to all their data right in their computer's browser, just like it was "local", but without the hassles of configuring workstations, maintaining servers, etc.

We're not talking about cat licenses here, or when it's legal to water your lawn... this is often patient-confidential data, customer financial data, and lots of stuff critical to the functionality of the agency in question.

Think about that for a second.  Potentially YOUR data (depending on which state you live in the US) is being hosed back and forth over the internet daily as part of the normal business operations in some agencies.

Security issues aside, why is this a bad idea?

Has anyone noticed that the intertube is not necessarily 100% reliable?  What happens when some script-kiddie gets mad at (say) the state of California and DOS attacks the frack out of the state servers?  I'll tell you: nobody gets any work done.

Of similar concern: what if the vendor goes out of business?  The data's all stored on THEIR servers.  Sure, contingency plans exist (e.g. "in the event of operational shut-down a copy of the data shall be delivered to the customer") but that's little comfort if you don't have a crack IT staff standing by to rebuild your enterprise.  And that's assuming the customer even GETS the data -- I've personally witnessed situations where the customer ended up with nothing.

A better solution would be to run the vendor's wonderful software inside the firewalls, on state-owned hardware.  But that's not the business model that sells, apparently, because none of the customers I know using this product operate that way.

It's a disaster waiting to happen, many know it, but are powerless to do anything. I know, because some have tried.  It seems the interlink is a Bright Shiny Object that overcomes rational thought, at least for some folks.

Sorry for the rant, but this situation has been on my mind since this thread started. It's not a condemnation of web-based apps, far from it... just an observation that not everyone is immune to the power of marketing bad ideas. 

iphigenie:
That is certainly something to ponder - although I am thinking about it not from a perspective of reliability (as I can imagine that a company which focuses on technology and provides it to 20 different clients across the coutry -and whose livelyhood depends on this working properly - is more likely to have good architecture and practices than each of those 20 running something independently). No, I am thinking about it from a perspective of accountability - the *staff* in these companies have access to our data, and they don't have the public service contracts/oaths/whatever to limit what they can and cannot do about this data. The potential for a bad apple to take criminal advantage is high. Or maybe I have illusions about public service.

To be honest the data safety probably is a plus for most online apps. When my laptop was stolen and i discovered I couldnt figure out  how to recover my opera notes, sent mail history etc. I was extremely happy that quite a lot of my key files and settings had been uploaded or used on online services and could be recovered.

Tekzel:
I am firmly in the "no use for online apps" camp.  I don't use any free mail services, tried Gmail but hated it instantly and never looked at it again.  For email, a portable install of Thunderbird on my flash drive is perfect for me.  I have a domain hosted at Godaddy with their email service and it has worked perfectly for me for 2 years now.  Side benefit:  I can be michael@ instead of michael2200404@.  Its a small thing, but it makes me happy.

Oh I do use the web based email client at Godaddy once in a while when I find myself without my flash drive and need to check my mail for some reason.

No. To me the web based app thing is mostly a fad and like all fads, it will die.  I could be wrong.  Time will tell.

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