It seems to be very easy for journalists, web developers and SEO experts to expound upon the wonders of the network and the cloud. But then again those folks tend towards pushing text around. The harsh reality is that not everyone uses a computer the way they do. If you are a gamer or produce media then you know that the network and the cloud are far from there yet. Huge hard drives are still king as are fast processors and memory. Game installs in some cases(WoW, Guild Wars 2, Team Fortress 2) are starting to top 15-20GB and you typically can’t play the game the same day major updates come out usually due to the beloved network. Speeds aren’t fast enough to move that much content in a truly timely manner. Like wise for content producers you wouldn’t dream of trying to edit a 4K video file on one of the few available web based video editors. Your upload to the service and downloading of resultant content would take days. You’ll also note that even devices like smart phones are pushing the processor and ram(and microSD is making a come back) despite having nice fat LTE connections. I’d say at best we could call it a draw. Not because the technologies are on equal footing (hard drives as a concept are old tech) but because most users want or need a balance of the two. I’m a gamer in my free time and I write a blog and I keep a resume and other information in cloud services. I also do business stuff in cloud services. Give me a fat hard drive, fast processor, massive network connection and sweet cloud services on all my devices!

This post was prompted by the following link shared on Google+, my favorite social network. I don’t know Matt and I don’t have a problem with his opinion it simply drove me to share mine. Thanks Matt for sharing your thoughts! http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/the-heart-of-a-computer-is-the-network/