Startforce – A web based OS

Startforce is a web based operating system. I wanted to give it a try. Once I went to startforce website, I was presented with a login screen as shown below.

I clicked on the new user and entered the username and password. Once I entered those information and clicked on the New User button again (in the registration screen), the New User and Cancel buttons disappeared, but nothing happened. I then refreshed the site and tried to login with the username and password that I entered before. It then asked me to enter my name, zip, email etc for registration and sent a confirmation link to the email address I entered. Once I confirmed the registration, I could log in and was greeted with a desktop similar to Windows XP or one of the Linux OS in look (screenshot below).

It has a start menu similar to XP. You’ll see My Documents, My Music, My Pictures etc on the left side and menus like System, Media, Settings etc on the right. (pic below).

By default, Startforce contains some documents and pictures for you to experiment with. I opened an excel document that came with it. Startforce uses Zoho Office Suite to open Office documents (pic below).

Then the connection to the server failed (pic below). I didn’t try the ignore option. I used the relogin option and logged in again. I’m not sure what happens if the connection fails when you are editing a document that was not saved.

Startforce has it’s own web browser which I think from the look is Firefox. It’s pretty basic. You won’t see any option to personalize it.

You can also change your desktop look and feel using the desktop setting option. Go to Start menu, settings and select desktop settings and you’ll see a screen like the one below. You can change the desktop theme, wallpaper etc and you can set the screen saver too.

You have an option to upload your files from your desktop into Startforce OS. My overall impression is, It’s pretty neat and fast, but not quite stable. I have tried couple of different web based OSes earlier, but they were too slow to respond. This ones response is decent. Once they fix the stability problem, I think it’s an option worth considering.

Technorati Tags: Startforce, Web, Operating System, Zoho