So I stumbled across Jolicloud last week and after spending a few days playing with the Live CD I went ahead and installed it on my laptop. Technically Jolicloud is an OS designed for netbooks, but I’ve not had any trouble with it running on my Dell Latitude D630. A couple of features caught my eye quickly and were the reason I decided to check it out. First, Jolicloud does not need its own partition (although it can be setup that way). You can just run the Jolicloud install in Windows and it automatically sets it up as a dual boot system with a dedicated amount of space on a drive of your choosing.  If I get tired of it or don’t like it I can just uninstall and everything goes back to normal. The other thing that I like is the simple, clean interface. You setup the apps you user regularly for things like web surfing, social media and checking email and then you’re set.

For basic web browsing I see myself using Jolicloud fairly often on my laptop. Then if I need to do something work related or more involved I can just boot Windows instead. There are over 700 apps currently available and more getting added weekly.  So far though I’ve not ran into anything I wish I could do that was missing.  VLC, Firefox, Google Docs and Twitter cover my main items. Another feature I like but don’t really use yet is that your settings and apps are saved to your Jolicloud account.  Then, if you log in on another system that has Jolicloud it will set everything just how you left it on the first system.  This cross system syncing will come in hand when I do get a new laptop or netbook.  It also allows for my wife to setup her own layout without effecting my stuff by creating her own account.

Oh, did I mention it is free, it boots fast and the apps install almost instantly with just one click?  All very nice features. Jolicloud hasn’t replaced my Windows 7 install, and I doubt that it ever will, but for day to day normal usage I’m starting to really like it.