On Thursday, WalMart begins selling the Everex Green gPC TC2502, a $198, low-powered, Linux-based PC that's designed primarily for running Web 2.0 apps.

When users first fire up their gPC, they'll get a Mac-like desktop with a series of program icons "docked" across the bottom. The icons are really bookmarks to popular and useful Web 2.0 services from Google and other vendors. There are icons for Google Docs, Gmail, Google Maps, and YouTube, for example, as well as Meebo, Facebook, and Wikipedia. Sprinkled into the lineup are some non-Web-based apps, like Skype and Gimp, but the novice user won't know, initially, which are local apps and which are Web services.

Isn't that as it should be? An app is an app, so why should users know or care if it's running on their local PC or in the cloud?

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Everex Green, gPC, WalMart, Desktop, PC, Linux, Google