Could Microsoft Become Irrelavent*?

I'm a a bit slow on the uptake so I may be a late arrival to this realization but I suddenly see how the use of computers could change in the very near future. The standard for many years has been to load up with Microsoft products in order ensure compatibility. Now there may be an appealing set of alternatives thanks to the convergence of 4 trends

• Web 2.0. The maturity of Web 2.0 means that there will be no down side to running applications inside a browser. We already see context-sensitive menus, drag-and-drop, and a host of other features once the exclusive domain of locally installed apps.
• VMWare. You no longer have to select your operating system based on the applications you run. Now you can run Windows in a Parallels session on a Mac or use VMWare on a Linux machine.
• Connectivity. I think we can now presume that Internet connectivty is always available so why do we need to save data locally? If fact, maybe the standard should be to save on the network and backup locally.
• Terminal Services. Looks to me like every OS sports a Windows-friendly remote desktop client. So if you were totally sold on running, say, Ubuntu Linux on your laptop but balked on your reilance on Quickbooks, a painless work-around could be to set up a terminal server that runs Quickbooks (and any other Windows-only program you fancy).

There is something very appealing about this model where the configuration of your computer is incidental to the data. The browser rules and connectivity trumps format.

*Can someone explain why the vowel between the l and v in relevent is not the same as in irrelavent. In fact the definition is \Ir*rel"a*vant\, a. Not relevant;