A coworker sent me a link from lifehack.org talking about the possible obsolescence of the hard drive and software.

Personally, that school of thought was what made me finally settle on Gmail, Google Reader, Google Personalized Homepage, and Google Calendar.  I haven’t yet made the leap to Google Docs & Spreadsheets (and, if rumors are to be believed, Presently).  Reason being, the only time I use a word processor at home is when I’m writing a snail-mail letter, usually to complain about something.  While Google Docs has an “export to PDF” feature that provides an otherwise decent printable copy, they don’t (yet) give you any customization options on the print format (portrait v. landscape, margins, etc.).  If Google Docs would give me that, my home office software suite would be completely online.  Until then, I’ll keep using OpenOffice.org.

And where's my online version of Quicken or MS Money?  I like my personal finance manager, but I have yet to see a compelling online replacement.  Sure, there's Mvelopes, but I tried it and didn't like it.  Get me a good online PFM that integrates with all the OFX-based data sources Quicken can, and offers integrated online bill-pay with balance forecasting, and I'm there.  Charge me $5 a month if you want.  I'll pay it.

Even if I were to move all of my day-to-day tasks online, I'd still never be able to call the hard drive obsolete.  I've got way too much digital music, video, and photos that I'm not willing to share with the world, nor am I willing to wait for it to upload/download in huge chunks.  No, I'll keep buying more and more storage for these things, and I'll keep paying Mozy $5 a month to back them up.  Digital media will continue to drive me to buy more storage, even in a world where you could, at least theoretically, offload it online somewhere.

Then there are development tools.  If you're a .NET developer, you're pretty well tied in to Visual Studio, or perhaps SharpDevelop.  I don't see either of these tools going web-based anytime soon.

So I can't move my whole life online, but can I at least carry a large part of it with me?  Lately, I’ve been toying a lot with the notion of carrying my life on a USB drive.  Of course, the obvious solution is the PortableApps suite, but that doesn't get me anything the Google App suite doesn't already.  MojoPac (a virtual desktop that leverages the host Windows OS as its own OS) sounds closer to ideal, but there are application compatibility concerns.  Can I be sure it'll work with all my apps?  So far, the most appealing option is to get a big-ass USB drive and build a VHD with everything I need, and then run the VHD in Virtual PC on whatever system I'm using.  The downside to that, assuming the owner of the PC will let me install Virtual PC, is performance, although it's less of an issue these days thanks to Moore's Law.

But then again, when I've got Remote Desktop Connection, does it really matter?

(Side note: Scott Hanselman did a podcast with Gina Trapani of LifeHacker.com a few months ago.  If you dig life hacking, it's worth a listen!)