As technology gets cheaper and more and more people use the Internet a trend has come out and its projected uses have been asking some serious questions. Now we all know that storing files online is nothing new. After all many of us use sites like Photobucket.com to store images.

There are literally thousands of websites that offer free webspace to store your files, be it images, documents, videos and so on. As equipment becomes cheaper it allows companies to offer their users tons of free space to place their files on.

Eventually it is predicted that we are going to basically have an online operating system. It would be very similar to what you have, but imagine that instead of carrying around USB drives, CDs, and so on you would simply register on a website that would sync your computer’s files to the one’s stored on the web.

So, not only would if work as a great backup tool, but more importantly as a tool where we can acess programs and files from any computer (completly USB free). Now certain websites like XinDesktop.com are already developing stuff like this. Google has also been speculated to be creating an OS though no one really knows for sure.

The question that is raised here is: are people willing to use this kind of service. Personal information is very important so placing it on the Net makes it vulnerable. There’s an old adage that is told to new webmasters who are afraid of people stealing their code: if you don’t want it stolen don’t put it on the Net.

Nothing is hackproof and so this is probably the second factor why I think people and even businesses would probably not go the online route (the first being that technology needs to advance a bit before online operating systems are just as powerful as the one’s on your computer).

On the other hand the benefits of an online OS are just as plenty. It’s a great way to access your information anywhere anytime. It remains to be seen if online operating systems such as XinDesk and others catch on.

Would you use an online operating system if it existed? I probably would, but I think there would have to be an option as to what I wanted placed there to protect my privacy.