Giving JoliCloud 1.1 a spin, I have a eeePC 4G - one of the first gen netbooks, its got’s 2GB of memory, 4GB of flash memory and an 8GB SD card for storage. But it’s about as unpowerful as a netbook gets. I had been using it as an IE6 test machine running XP. But now i decided to try jolicloud, I got errors when i tried version 1.0 - the install was a little slow but simple, via booting from a usb key. Some of the stages took time to complete ( the one after the time zone is set seems to take an age) But now its running nicely, The keyboard and screen are still cramped, but its been given a fresh lease of life, sadly these days my phone is more powerful and has the same resolution screen (higher on iPhone 4).
It’s a little bit of an odd paradigm - basicallly its focused on web apps. It’s a nice idea, though ideally needs a 3G modem to be useful (like the CR-48, and presumably all actual chrome netbooks) though as both my nexus S and N8 have mobile hotspots its not much of an issue.
The question is … is a net book actaully any use now that phones are so fully featured?
Well the eeePC 4G probably isn’t but modern netbook’s have larger useful screens, and almost full sized keyboards. They need a light OS, and jolicloud may be a great option for people wanting a ‘toater’ of a computer, for half the price of an iPad. And theres the rub, its cheap - so for students / kids it’s a great extra screen option. no issues running miniclip :)
