The big VMware conference is happening down the street from us. It appears to be the first of the fall “big shows” at Moscone Center in San Francisco. You can tell because the restaurants are full for lunch again, hotel prices on Hotwire are up again etc. Good for the local economy, that’s for sure.

I was reading the reports of the keynote by VMware CEO Paul Maritz, in which he describes a virtual PC strategy which (surprise) uses VMware to serve up pixel-only version of a PC session. To be fair, this topics was apparently a short one at the end of his preso. Nevertheless, the reaction from the crowd was to start walking toward the next session. Surprised? I’m not.

Maybe a few of you remember the “SunRay” – Sun’s version of the same device around 2000-2001. The concept is wonderful. Just show up at a display, put your card in and up pops your session, just like you left it the last time you used it. Sun couldn’t get it off the ground except for a few special cases like schools and call centers. Others have tried. Again, unless there is a special use case, it’s an idea whose time has come and gone. Its pretty clear that cloud apps are happening, complemented by a new breed of client device – my money is on the iphone and successors. And for a while, we’ll continue to need a laptop to do presos on airplanes (ie disconnected). But the PC in the cloud, as good as the concept was – missed the window, if there ever really was one.