Dematerialize Me

Every computer crash or re-install is the occasion for asking the right questions: what was wrong in my previous set-up? What can I improve?

Switching the OS for another one that asks much less care (defragmentation anyone?) is certainly an appropriate action: I will come back to it in a later post.

Reducing the hard disk drive footprint is surely another one. This means less to re-install and less to lose between two backups. This means dematerializing applications and use their web counterparts in lieu. So far, here I am:

• E-mail client: GMail instead of Thunderbird,
• RSS feed reader: BlogLines instead of Omea Reader,
• Chat client: Meebo instead of Trillian.
  

Of course, this poses the question of confidentiality as my data is in other people's hands. I try not to store anything confidential there and I will probably resume using PGP. But the advantages, to my sense, over-exceed this inconvenient.

Not only my web related tools are available anywhere there is internet connectivity, but session state is persisted: for example, all the RSS feeds that I have marked as read will remain so (which is not the case when you have multiple clients on multiple machines).

The next step is to dematerialize me: I am still thinking on how I could be replaced with my web counterpart... In the meantime, if you know other smart tools like the ones I have listed before, please comment on this post!