There have been so many technology breakthroughs lately that it can be difficult to sort out which ones are interesting, which are advanced, and which will alter the way we interact with machines forever. The concept of cloud hosting is very likely going to be the latter-it gives us seamless use of powerful performance tools without having to download individual programs, deal with licensing, or upgrades. In other words, it makes anything that can access the internet extremely powerful without actually occupying a permanent space on the hard drive. This has serious implications that will be discussed further. For personal use this can be terrific, but it’s not really essential yet. Having all your information stored at a remote site handled by a reliable company who gives you access to the programs they have is useful, but it’s not necessary.