Quote Originally Posted by Theli View Post
Actually it does usually apply, because a desktop application needs to be installed several times if you use more than one computer. It also generally needs to be reinstalled with the operating system. On a web app, you only really need to register once.
Use portable software. From my experience it actually lives longer than web submissions, because I've lost several passwords in my life.

Quote Originally Posted by Theli View Post
I'm thinking that the web browser is the bottleneck here, which is why Google started developing their own.

Now of course, you may argue that if you need a new web browser to fully take advantage of these web apps then you have only moved the problem (still need to install new software locally). Which is why I think it makes sense for Google to either develop their own operating system, or partner up with an already existing Linux distribution where their web browser can be installed by default.
I won't argue this way because you install browser once for all webapps. Just like you install OS.

But instead I'll tell you why are web apps so slow:
There are 2 factors. One is that they are written in a scripting language, which has to be interpreted at runtime and therefore will always be way slower than machine code. I seriously doubt that they'll ever manage to make JavaScript engine "just" 10 times slower than C++ in usual tasks. However, at some point in the future it may not be a problem, possibly CPUs will catch up and make this difference small enough not to be noticeable. But this makes claims like "we'll offload your machines' work to our servers, so home computers will become small, cool, quiet boxes" laughable.

The second problem is internet connection. I've been using several lines ~1-2MBit and there have always been lag caused by network traffic. Again, maybe one day....but still: what for?