Re: Web vs. Desktop based systems
- From: rem642b@xxxxxxxxx (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t)
- Date: Fri, 25 May 2007 08:12:43 -0700
From: gabriel...@xxxxxxxxx
I have to graduate for my master in Business Information
Management and need to do a survey for my thesis. The thesis is
about Web vs. Desktop based applications and the differences
perceived by the user. So not from the management/technology point
of view but from the end-user. I focus now on Desktop vs. Webmail
If you want to run a desktop application, you must first find a
version that will run on your particular computer and operating
system, then study the conditions under which you'd be allowed to
use it (for example: freeware, shareware, free-trial of crippled
version, or can't even try it until after you pay for it). Then you
must download it or otherwise get it onto your computer. Then you
must install and configure it. Finally you can try using it. If it
doesn't work, you've wasted all that effort getting it. If it
requires a fifty-gigabyte database to make any reasonable use of
it, then you need to buy a fifty-gigabyte hard disk before you can
even install it, and it may take a week to download the entire
database. (For example, has *anyone* successfully downloaded the
*entire* Google Groups archive, or even the most recent ten years
of it, so that they could run the GG search engine as a desktop
application?) You have to repeat that process of finding compatible
version and getting and installing for *each* program you *ever*
run even once as a desktop application. If you tried to download
all the software that exists that would run on your computer, just
so you'd have it all avaiable any time you needed it, you'd need a
hard disk bigger than anything you can afford. And if you want to
use the software from multiple locations, such as home and work,
you must carry your computer with immense hard disk around with
you, which might not be easy.
By comparison with Web-based services, the whole InterNet is a
single distributed computer system at your disposal anywhere you
can find a Web browser, which is virtually everywhere the InterNet
is available, which is nearly everywhere in the world. You don't
even need to carry your computer with Web browser around with you,
because just about any old Web browser you find anywhere will do
almost as well as any other. And all the Web sites can talk to all
the other Web sites (in theory), so one application can draw data
from another application anywhere on the planet, especially if both
are implemented in J2EE or some essentially equivalent
distributed-computing system. You can jump around from one Web
application to another, change your mind which one you like best
for a given type of task, abandon anything you don't like, without
any of the overhead of downloading and installing each time you
want to try something new. And you always get the latest public
version of any Web-based application. If there's a bug, and it gets
fixed, you can use the fixed version right away. No need to wait
for the update to get installed on your computer, no need to keep
track of the latest status of every application on your computer to
make sure you don't miss an important bugfix.
And because you can't read the object code and decompile it and
reverse engineer it and thereby steal people's valuable algorithms,
people who develop software are more likely to make their latest
and best work available as serverside software on the Web than
would be willing to *give* you a complete copy of their program for
download. Consequently more software is potentially available as
serviceside applications than is available for download. Also you
can run serverside software that runs on all sorts of computers
(all versions of Windows, Mac, Linux, whatever), whereas for
downloaded software you have to wait until there's a version
available for exactly your kind of computer and operating system
before you can try it, unless you can afford to have one each of
every kind of computer ever built and keep track of which of your
favorite programs is on which of your computers.
The main disadvantage of Web-based serverside software is that you
can't get live animated action that way. For that you need
clientside software, such as Java applets, which aren't available
in most Web-browser configurations. For example, even at De Anza
college where I took a class in distriuted Java, the Java applet I
wrote for my class would work on only one of the three Web browsers
available in the computer lab, and wouldn't work at all on any of
the Web browsers installed on the computer in the instructor's
office, and doesn't work on the browsers in the public computer lab
of my apartment complex either. Check if this works in the browser
on *your* computer: <http://www.rawbw.com/~rem/Java/Lab7.html>
It's not live action, but it checks if applets work at all there.
... questionnaire ... at: http://www.amteam.nl/thesis->
FRAME: http://studio.amteam.nl/thesis
->
Ten eerste bedankt voor uw bezoek aan dit onderzoek en hopelijk ook
voor het invullen van de vragenlijst. Dit onderzoek gaat over de
verschillen tussen mailprogramma's en webmail (mail websites).
Ter verduidelijking een aantal voorbeelden:
No hablo holandis. (Ik spreek het geen Nederlands.)
<http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr>
First also thanks for your visit to this research and hopelijk for
filling in the questionnaire. This research concerns the differences
between mail programmes and web mail (mail Internet sites). By way of
illustration a number of examples:
Oh, OK, if that's what you meant to say. That's not what you said
in your newsgroup article.
More of the Web page translated by babelfish:
Een mail programma is dus een programma wat u op uw pc heeft en
webmail is een mailbox die u opent via een website.
A mail programme is therefore a programme what you have on your pc.
and web mail is a mail box which you open by means of a Internet site.
(ouch! No wonder it's called babble-fishy!)
Het onderzoek neemt ca 4-8 minuten in beslag en heeft 50 meerkeuze- en
3 open vragen over uw gebruik van mail programma's en/of webmail.
The research confiscates approx. 4-8 minutes and has 50 meerkeuze -
and 3 open ask programmes and/or web mail concerning your use of mail.
(Don't you *dare* confiscate any of my time!! And keep your
meercats away from kissing me!!)
Om het onderzoek op uw situatie aan te passen is het nodig te weten
wat u gebruikt (of in het verleden gebruikt heeft) voor mail. Wellicht
dat u bijvoorbeeld op het werk Outlook gebruikt, maar prive Hotmail.
Nogmaals, u hoeft niet per se beide systemen nog in gebruik te hebben.
U mag ook gebruik maken van uw ervaring in het verleden.
U kunt nu uw situatie kiezen:
The research on your situation to adapt is know it necessary what you
use (or has in the past used) for mail. Possibly that you use Outlook
for example at the work, but prive Hotmail. Once again, you do not
need per se both have systems still in use. You can use also of your
experience in the past. You can choose situation now your:
(This reminds me of the instructions for equipment manufactured in China.)
Ah, some actual English finally! (IMO You really need a table of
contents at the very top that immediately jumps the user to the
language of choice!):
Thanks for your visit to the website of this Master Thesis Research
and hopefully also for your effort to complete the questionnaire. This
research is about the differences between mail programs and webmail
(mail websites).
That's better than the babelfish translation, but still not quite
the best English, specifically the "hopefully also" part.
But nice of you to *try* to seriously translate to English.
.
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