Windows 8 thoughts.......

That approach won't work for anyone who uses their PCs in a closed-system setting. Software developers (such as myself), for example.
There are also a lot of PCs that live behind various firewalls or on private networks (banking, defense, security applications) that cannot, for legal or security reasons, be connected to the cloud just to be able to boot and function.
MS would be signing its death warrant in the enterprise world if they ever did this.

MS is actually doing it the right way, offering both options. For those wanting the latest and greatest, sign up for a subscription. For those that want to own their license, sell it outright. I hope it stays that way.

I spent a lot of years in the "corporate world", where our company "subscribed" not only to our OS (eventually Windows) but also to the various programming systems we used.

The notion, though, was that we would continue using things as long as we wanted to, but not, as I recall, that our use would "expire"...when we paid a year's fee, we had the software even if we didn't go for an upgrade.

However, I have the impression that it was assumed that we would continue to pay a fee. But, I don't know the details!

Then, when it came to my home stuff, I decided on what I could afford and went with that.

Thin client may be the ideal for the software companies,reducing piracy and all. I guess it works for some corporate users running their own servers on a fast LAN. The issue big problems will come when you have huge numbers of users, all trying to access the same servers over what is very often a not very fast internet. I see the user experience for your average home user being one of great frustration. This will be especially true for things like office apps where we are used to the instant reaction to key presses etc. Imagine having to wait for every keystroke to be returned for display from the server.

Of course it may be that we won't actually see true thin client at all but rather something more like the Adobe approach with CC, coupled with automatic mirroring all of ones documents on cloud storage.

Alan

My years in the tech industry were interesting!

We actually had high-speed/"broadband" global internet services, so we could be in real-time contact with global operations and in fact we needed global internet servers prior to the time when MS finally "adopted" the internet.

However, my company did not follow the "cloud" path for things we needed to be up-and-running in the real time. We got software "subscriptions" in the form of corporate "keys" accompanying software from the various companies, and we shipped out software to our global users, and, while I was working there, never got into the "cloud" that Microsoft had been introducing.

It was interesting, because our global internet connectivity was quite robust, we just weren't so quick to put all our eggs in the basket!!

In that sense, it would be like a photographer today suddenly losing contact with the "cloud", not just with the ability to pay a fee, but then with the ability to run the software!

There's a balance for Thin Client. Just how "thin" it can be.

There's one option (not Microsoft) that allows replication / synchronization between desktop and laptop.

To us IT folk, a huge advantage of Thin Client (and other visualization setups) is "Re-Imaging".

If it's become corrupt, then its about 10 minutes to restore to the prior point-in-time.

I have never used the mobile option, but the theory is that you can work disconnected then sync your devices later. Obviously; if it's corrupt then the point-in-time restore is some time before the last re-sync.

There is a trust factor. They have your image. You could put your "data" on a non-replicated area that's not part of the backup. Sort of like having a "C Drive" for the programs, and all data on "D Drive". A common set-up in IT for years. The theory is that you only have to back up your data area, and if you have to re-install the OS and all programs then your data remains untouched.

There's some exciting potential here.