The personal cloud is taking over and is playing a bigger and more sophisticated part in the tech consumer’s life. Recent evidence of this is the release of Dropbox 1.0, which we covered here; the cross-platform cloud-based file sharing manager is gaining momentum in its segment of the market.

“Version 1.0 carries some serious improvements including a 20% reduced download sized for Mac users, extended attribute sync including resource forks as well as thorough bug fixes and more.”

Another testimonial of how the personal cloud is something every related company must address is the HP Photosmart eStation-All-in-One printer, which carries all the ‘standard’ printing features as well as online browsing, Facebook support, e-mail checking and more.

“You read it right—this new e-All-in-One is no ordinary printer as it has an attached tablet called Zeen, that lets you access Facebook or check your emails.”

This comes along with Apple’s recent and long-anticipated announcement it will launch the Mac App Store in Jan. 6 in an attempt to tap the success of its mobile app store to boost PC sales.

“Apps and software are definitely a key factor for all hardware sales at this point in the consumer electronics game, and Apple definitely intends to gain the potentially immense momentum that a sufficient Mac App Store would provide.”

In the coming year a personal and mobile cloud boom as well as a collision between the cloud and mainstream IT are predicted by IDC, whose report for 2011 we covered here. The report foresees a 5.7% increase in global IT spending and a 500+ percent growth in the cloud in 2011, a 5.7% increase in IT spending and 500%+ cloud growth in 2011.