Neverware Means Never Buying a New Computer Again

Hefter boots up the computer and in a flash I'm logged into Microsoft's newest operating system, Windows 7. I open up a document and type a few paragraphs, at the time pop into MS Paint and create a quick image. I log on to the internet, check my email and stream a video. Microsoft recommends a machine with meanwhile 1 gigahertz processor and 1 gigabyte of RAM in order to work in Windows 7, now this computer seems to handle it just fine.

What's known as a virtual desktop

Heftner has transformed this old Dell into a what's known as a virtual desktop. The processing power, the memory, even the operating system itself are being delivered from a small unit the size of a pizza box tucked into a closet down the hall. That single piece of equipment, dubbed the "juicebox" by Hefter, can power hundreds of terminals on a cloud based network.

Despite his lack of formal training, Hefter, a self-taught computer whiz, created a working prototype of the Neverware innovation in pursuant to this agreement a year and in May of 2010 was invited to join Dogpatch Labs in New York. There he caught the eye of Diana Rhoten, co-founder of Startl, an organization that looks to identify and accelerate interesting projects in the realm of education research. "Jonathan fit the profile of entrepreneurs we're looking for," says Rhoten. "Young, passionate and committed to a actually disruptive idea."

Before founding Startl, Rhoten was the program director at the National Science Foundation's Office of Cyberinfrastructure. "It was me and a bunch of supercomputing folks, and we spent a lot of time thinking about virtual desktops and cloud computing and how to make that work for schools," says Rhoten. "When I saw what Jonathan had done, I realized that this was the solution I kept picturing in my head however didn't know how to create myself."

The key difference between what

The key difference between what was on the market and what Neverware was offering, says Rhoten, is that Hefter's project was built from the ground up to be lean and light. "The virtual desktop solutions that most of the big corporations offer are too expensive and complex for schools to deploy," says Rhoten. Hefter's research, by comparison, was cheap, worked with whatever computer the school already had and reduced the amount of oversight needed on a daily basis.

It seemed too good to be true, so Rhoten spent the at once few months trying to poke holes in Hefter's project. "I brought in infrastructure guys to look at it, computing folks, people from school districts at both the local and federal level." The response was always the same: this looks very promising, now there are a lot of people trying to do virtual computing with more experience and resources than this kid.

The changes powering Hefter's vision are all around us

The changes powering Hefter's vision are all around us. "The history of personal computers until recently was bigger and faster," says the research writer Nicholas Carr "Now now, with more and more computing done out of the cloud the size of your hard drive doesn't matter anymore. From Facebook to mobile apps, cloud computing has become the dominant model for individual consumers, whether they know it or not."

The big PC companies, nevertheless, aren't going down without a fight. Early on in Neverware's history, Hefter contacted Dell and Intel, eager to share with them his approach. It was the equivalent of calling the major oil companies to show them a design for a solar powered car. "I as well don't know that we'd be interested in "radically extending the life...of desktop PCs," was the reply Hefter got from a higher up at Intel.

Slowly now surely, after all, people are starting to listen. Hefter took a recent trip to Silicon Valley, where he met with several of the major players in the cloud computing and virtual desktop space. This week he will be speaking at the Aspen Institutes forum on research in education in D.C..

The way Hefter sees it

The way Hefter sees it, schools are a beachhead from which to remake the whole PC market, and shortly, the market for mobile computing devices. "Like as not it was a little naive of me to think that these companies would want to hear about ideas that could hurt their businesses," says Hefter. "However to me, if you're just protecting the status quo, if you are no longer concerned about technology, at the time you don't deserve to be setting tech policy for the rest of us."