Jolicloud Review on the HP Mini 1000

I tried several operating system on the HP Mini 1000 netbook during the past months, inlcuding Karmic Koala Alpha releases of Ubuntu Netbook Remix (UNR) and Kubuntu netbook edition, as well as Moblin v2.0.

I was pretty excited after watching the Moblin video tour and also very impressed of the great looking Kubuntu UI. Still, I am most satisfied with UNR from a usability and hardware support perspective and certainly due to being used to work with Ubuntu.

But, there is another OS which I want to test drive before deciding what system to run in the future: Jolicloud. Like the other systems mentioned above Jolicloud is optimized for netbooks. The Jolicloud developers call it an Internet operating system as there is a strong focus on Web/cloud based applications.

As you can see in Veronica Belmont's Jolicloud review, its user interface looks damn nice. She tested Jolicloud for a couple of weeks on an HP Mini 1000 netbook. It runs considerably faster than the pre-loaded MIE operating system, which Veronica apparently does not like, and feels slightly faster than Windows 7 beta too. It's easy to install (in about 30 minutes) when you follow the online documentation.

A downside she noticed in apps like Gmail and Google Reader is that you cannot use the same keyboard shortcuts as in the Web based interfaces. Jolicloud itself resembles a social network in some aspects. For example, you can see what apps your friends are using and they can see yours, provided you have added friends — a feature that may well scare some people off.

Jolicloud comes with a variety of apps that integrate services like Facebook, Twitter, and Boxee into the operating system as well as native apps like Firefox, Pidgin, and OpenOffice.org. Veronica is really happy with Jolicloud overall and suggests netbook manufacturers to sell their devices with Jolicloud or at least make it an option.

Let's hope they listen to her. Even though I have not yet tested Jolicloud myself, I am sure that it is a better option than any Windows based OS.