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.

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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).

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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).

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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5 Responses to Startforce – A web based OS

  1. Pingback: Joyce Babu » Online Operating Systems – Moving towards Hard Disk free computers?

  2. Arun says:

    It worked for me in Firefox. I tried again after seeing your comments and it worked.

  3. Paul says:

    Doesn’t seem to work with Firefox; can’t even see the login screen. Zoho does work with Firefox.

  4. Pingback: The Tall Tales of Tailen

  5. Pingback: Joyce Babu

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