You don’t have a lot of time. On the operating system market, there are lots of great products, like Linux. With Linux, you can easily customize the look and feel of your system, tweak every aspect of the desktop to your specific needs. What many people forget to tell you is that this can take hours of work.
So how will you get your favorite daily comics to show up on your grandmother’s old ThinkPad?
If you have a passable Internet connection, there are ways of keeping everything on a server, instead of on your computer. Besides this, there is a growing range of web services, apps and sites available, which allow you to manage your daily lightweight computing and entertainment. Data security is an issue, although if you’re really worried about your documents, you can easily host some web apps on your own.
Web Operating Systems
Why not? Your tasks are performed mainly by the server your Web OS is on. In most cases you get a full desktop which you can tweak to your hearts desire, a basic office suite, and other everyday apps, like mail readers, FTP clients and other useful software. But the best part is, your fully customized desktop is available anywhere, anytime, in any (mainstream) browser, at its web address. I’ll name a few of my personal favorites: EyeOS (it got a Yahoo! tech award just recently, congrats!), Cloudo (still in alpha) and G.ho.st (3 gigs of space).
Of course, as always, Mashable compiled a mammoth list of +46. This guy scares me with his lists.
Mashups or customized jumping-off pages
More famous bloggers put these sites into the same category as Web operating systems, but I disagree, you will se why. Netvibes is one of the best data personalized data sites out there. There’s also iGoogle and Pageflakes. I use Netvibes, though (least kludgy). With an account at sites like these you can create a mashup of all the data you need to start and organize your day. Be it a simple Gmail checker, RSS feed, or a full-fledged to-do list, calendar, calculator, the possibilities are limitless. The community also creates its own widgets, and there are already thousands in the directory to choose from. So, while you don’t get a desktop, you can, theoretically, get a similar functionality.
Online apps
Zoho Office, Google Docs, Buzzword, Conceptshare, ThinkFree Office: all attempt to replace the software you are using now on your desktop. While they may not have all the features you notice in your full Microsoft Office 13, most people don’t even need them and a simple app like Google Docs can satisfy your word-processing hunger. At least the gOS team thinks so…
So there you have it. Even though there are other ways to synchronize your desktop software, you will always have a big advantage if you manage to keep them on the Internet and in your browser window.
And now a question for the readers:
Do you use any of these services? Why?
Let me introduce you to the greatest clone ever. The Everex Cloudbook, while totally ripping off Asus’ idea, is on the other side cursed by the Hackintosh curse. Even the bloody Everex site seems to have an Apple font on the front which doesn’t work on my Debian box. Come on!
