I really doubt they will ever make home storage obsolete, and I know that they will never make it so computers which aren't connected to the internet obsolete. I believe that having information stored on the internet is a step forward, and that privacy isn't very hard to tackle. With tunnelling and encryption through trusted services, I really doubt there will be many problems. I'm sure that companies and employers will expect their employees to make sure that all private information is stored outside of the internet, just for security from hackers. For personal use though, I don't think that there will be much at all to worry about. You have to think about what the hacker is going to get out of taking your private information. If they are going to be able to hack into things which are secured by professionals who know what they're doing, I think it's easy enough to say that they could easily get access to the private information on your computer anyway. All I'm saying is that this seems like a very good idea, if my applications, movies, music and files (that aren't too private) can be accessed from any computer, then I'm all for it, provided that there is significant security precautions taken. If I'm asked to purchase a computer which will only run server-side, I'll say no, I think that if Microsoft makes Win7 completely server-side, they are going to be committing marketing suicide, and that goes the same for all the popular OS's. Thankfully, from what previews of Win7 I've seen already, it looks like a good OS (Yes, Microsoft appears to have made a good OS) - with a good foundation and good ideas behind it. I think that server based will only go as far as applications - RIAs and such. gOS seems to be the first Linux distro to go down that route, we will see how long it takes for other OS's to support RIAs more.