tablets and USB ports and Cloud

Thanks for all the good info and ( tatest )that was great to learn the reason behind cloud.
I don't keep anything on my computer that is important but backup what I want on a thumb drive.My XP is about done for and I have a laptop with windows 7 and I'm looking at tablets to see if they will do what I want. Jay

As said, no you do not have to use "cloud" storage. However if security is a concern you could try SpiderOak. its just like Dropbox except that their employees do not have access to your public encryption key thereby making it virtually impossible for anyone other than you to retrieve your files.

Hi J,

Long time no see! What's happening with you these days?

My Apple iPad doesn't have a usb, a tremendous shortcoming of an otherwise great tablet. I think the Microsoft Surface does have one, but I really should let someone else discuss that.

I do agree with the previously expressed opinion that you should be really careful with what you store on the cloud.

Where have you been on the small trailers forum?

All the best,

Art

J herb wrote:
Do any of the tablets have a USB port ? and is cloud a on line place to store your stuff and do you have to use it ?
Thanks in advance. Jay

Android tablets usually have one USB port.

And personally I would not store stuff where hackers can get at the stored files unless it's stuff I don't mind being made public.

Thus I do have a dropbox account but not much in it and usually only photos I am making public myself. (Thus saving the hackers the trouble)

What they are calling The Cloud is not just storage, it is a range of computing services, particularly at this marketing stage a place to synchronize multiple devices that you want to work the same way and have the same information.

Clouds are also for running applications, and some devices, notably the Chromebook, require that you use Google's cloud if you want to do anything, because applications do not download to, nor run on, the device.

Apple also applied this model to the iPhone originally, relented after the first year and allowed native applications, increasing device storage to accommodate them.

Adobe is currently trying to move some application suites to cloud computing, but for most of their applications you still have the option to install and run locally.

Commercial computing started out on the cloud, only it wasn't called that. Corporations hooked up terminals and input-output devices to servers run by companies like GE and IBM, but in the 1960s started buying their own. GE's Genie initiated consumer cloud computing to keep the machines busy and making money during off hours. It was followed by Compuserve and America Online, which did not arrive on the scene until after home computers, and was thus designed to work with a dedicated local application, not just a terminal.

Microsoft tried to take us back to that model with MSN, which was originally intended to run applications against client programs on PCs, a model largely rejected by corporate clients who preferred to control their own applications and data, and by consumers already hooked on buying software in boxes rather than paying per use.

We will see where this centralized server model goes, now that it has the hip name "Cloud."

My 3 year old Motorola Xoom has a micro USB, and micro HDMI with 64GB of storage. Yes clouds are for storing and no you do not have to use them.