Since I started writing for Global Traveler in 2006, I’ve had the good fortune to visit more than 60 countries. And I’ve taken my laptop to every one. When I started out, I didn’t even own a laptop. I wrote my first story for the magazine, “Back from the Brink,” about Buenos Aires, in smoky Internet cafés, often surrounded by backpackers and teenage boys playing video games. I’m now a travel writer based in Atlanta. And like many travel writers, I’ve invested quite a bit in my new machine — a 13-inch MacBook Pro. So far, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky. Twice I’ve left it on conveyor belts while passing through airport security — once in Prague, en route to Moscow for a stay at the Swissôtel, and again on my way to Beirut last January. On my return to Atlanta last month, a well-meaning screener had tried to hand it to me, but instead dropped it on the belt. Somehow it survived. Recently though, and with the advent of so-called “cloud computing,” I’ve begun to wonder whether it’s worth the risk. Do I really need to haul my laptop along for a few days in London? Or Lagos? Or anywhere else for that matter? For one, almost all luxury hotels boast well-equipped business centers. And many now also make laptops available for free — or for a small fee — allowing me the same mobility I’d have with my own machine. But that’s just the hardware. Most of us take our computers with us because they’re our computers — with our files and photos organized neatly (or, in my case, not so neatly) on our desktops, just as we left them when we last shut them down; it’s the stuff inside that matters to us most. And that’s where “the cloud” comes in. You’ve probably heard of it — an amorphous space somewhere in the ether, where data (songs, programs, PowerPoint slides and pictures of your trips) can be uploaded and accessed from anywhere, using any device capable of connecting to the Internet. Think of it as a floating hard drive that follows you wherever you go without taking up any room in your briefcase. In fact, you probably already use many cloud-based tools — like Flickr, Twitter, Dropbox, Google Calendar and LinkedIn. I, for one, use all of the above on a nearly daily basis — in part because I don’t like to burden my laptop with loads of data and in part because it’s just more convenient for someone always on the go. I also like to have everything open and running at the same time. Rarely do I remember my passwords. And that’s been one of the main drawbacks of relying on the hotel business center or the rental PC. Everything has to be reopened, logged into anew. Now, however, there’s a new tool that solves that problem, too, and it may be the one that convinces me to leave my MacBook behind when I take my next trip. It’s called iSpaces, and I say “may” because it’s still in beta and isn’t Mac-ready quite yet. But I’ve seen it in action, and I love what I’ve seen. iSpaces is essentially a portal to your personalized cloud. Through its unique “CloudBrowser” feature — a kind of browser-within-a-browser that saves all of a user’s windows, tabs and browsing history to the cloud — you can log into the site from any device and access one of several desktops, or “spaces,” you’ve created. You have to be registered first — and you have to download iSpaces’ “engines,” which can take a few minutes. But once that’s over, everything’s easier; thanks to its web-persistence technology, whatever you’d opened at home stays open, so there’s no need to remember dozens of different passwords or risk writing them down on something that could get stolen or left behind. It’s fast and it’s free. And it even comes with an in-built, Skype-like computer-to-computer phone service — called SpacePhone — that’s both free and secure. “I often work from multiple computers and I was tired of wasting time logging in and out of various applications,” says Dermot Doherty, iSpaces founder and chief technology officer. “I wanted to create a technology that made my digital life easily accessible and persisitent. iSpaces is a whole new breed of technology.” Doherty calls the cloud “the future of computing,” and judging from recent moves by the major players, it’s hard to disagree. Earlier this year, Google and Amazon unveiled new cloud-based programs — Google Music and Amazon Cloud Player — for streaming personal music to Android phones. And just last week, Apple followed suit with its much anticipated iCloud service, which is designed, it says, “to store your content and wirelessly push it to all your devices — automatically.” Like its rivals, iCloud is premised on the notion that the era of the personal computer-as-digital hub has passed. “We’re going to demote the PC to just be a device,” Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, told audiences at the Worldwide Developers Conference in early June. “We are going to move the center of your digital life to the cloud.” More than a hard-drive in the sky, he explained, iCloud would be seamlessly integrated across all of a Mac-user’s apps, always syncing the content stored. In the end, it’s a question of values, and as with any such decision, there’s a trade-off: I, for one, value the freedom to roam un-tethered to any one technology over the convenience that brand loyalty surely affords. Perhaps someday Steve Jobs will convince me to trade my Android in for an iPhone. But he hasn’t yet. In the meantime, I’ll access the cloud on my own terms. Regardless, it’s a sign of the times. Cloud computing isn’t just another IT craze. It’s a paradigm shift that’s soon to make the hard drive as obsolete as the eight-track. And for business travelers in particular, it’s likely to make life on the road — or up in the air — much, much easier. — Patrick Adams, guest blogger