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
[...] The interface, especially opening and dragging windows, was a little slow. Read a more detailed review of StartForce at Arun’s [...]
It worked for me in Firefox. I tried again after seeing your comments and it worked.
Doesn’t seem to work with Firefox; can’t even see the login screen. Zoho does work with Firefox.
The web-based operating system. At the time we were talking about renting thin clients from some OS provider, but that’s probably a lot further in the future. Right now the web-based OSs are popping up and all you need is a browser to access them. One review is for StartForce which is still somewhat unstable, but at least not as slow as some of the previous webOSs. Another is eyeOS (review here) where you can get a free account to try it out. I’d give it another year or so before we’ll see companies more aggressively
uses Zoho Office Suite for viewing and editing Office documents. There are many desktop themes and screensavers available in the desktop settings section. The interface, especially opening and dragging windows, was a little slow. Read a more detailedreview of StartForceat Arun’s blog. Demo Login : Username – demo Password – demo YouOS YouOS is another online desktop which won the seventh position in PC Magazine’s 20 most innovative products of 2007 award. The GUI of YouOS was very fast but was not as