It's certainly not a revolution; anyone who has been using online email services such as Yahoo! and GMail has been "cloud computing" for years, now. But we are witnessing a slow transition towards not only our data being stored on a remote server, but also a range of applications which allow us to use that data, such as Google Docs. Your computer, for all its processing power, merely becomes an access point, a portal through which you can operate a remote computer. The benefit of working this way? Well, you're freed of the responsibility of how the applications work; you just fire up an internet browser. The drawbacks? Well, you're freed of the responsibility of how the applications work; you just fire up an internet browser.

Because, sometimes, we like to have full control of our computing environment. People spent absurd amounts of time customising, tweaking and adding plugins to expand functionality; some also make a great effort to avoid the upgrade habit, and stick with a setup that suits them. With hosted applications and "cloud computing", you can log on to discover that the upgrade has been done for you, and you're now faced with a new-look program when, actually, you preferred the old way. And not only is it dictated how you work; it's dictated when you can work, too.

We like to imagine that the internet is an always-on resource. But it's not. There could be problems at your end, at the other end, or any number of points in between. Apple's MobileMe has had teething troubles which have led to a free subscription extension of three months for its users. GMail, for all its claims of uptime and reliability, has been choking a little in the past few weeks, and has forced pro-cloud system administrators to have a bit of a rethink.

The big selling point for cloud computing is that all your devices can share the data. But I, like many other people, only have two devices – a computer and a mobile phone. They talk to each other already. And for them to communicate via a third party, slowly, via a network connection that may or may not be up, doesn't feel like a leap into the future. I'm not denying that it is the future – and the huge amounts being splurged on data centres surely back this up. But there's no need to get overexcited about the cloud, at least until the cloud is guaranteed to work properly.

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