I recently created a free OnLive account for the sole purpose of playing a demo of FTL (a fun-looking game that you can support through Kickstarter if you're interested). Anyway, OnLive didn't blow me away, but this recent article about quantum computing makes me think that services like OnLive are going to dominate the future of computing.
Given the rapid progress that IBM has made, scalable quantum computing is starting to look like a real possibility. As error-correction protocols improve and coherence times lengthen, accurate quantum computing becomes a real possibility. But don't expect to have a quantum smartphone anytime soon using this technique. In order to get the results the IBM team has seen in either the 2-D or 3-D configuration, the qubits have to be cooled down to less than a degree above absolute zero."There's a growing sense that a quantum computer can't be a laptop or desktop," said Steffen. "Quantum computers may well just being housed in a large building somewhere. It's not going to be something that's very portable. In terms of application, I don't think that's a huge detriment because they'll be able to solve problems so much faster than traditional computers."
Emphasis mine. We may have quantum computing at warmer temperatures eventually, but the first few generations of quantum computers will be in giant warehouses, and we'll connect to them over high-speed networks. A quantum computer you access via a service like OnLive will be orders of magnitude more powerful than anything you could fit in your house, and so desktops and laptops will die off and be replaced with thin clients that have just enough computing power to display streaming video from a quantum computer.
