Meeting Eye to Eye with EyeOS?

Recently I started testing on-line operating systems to see what merits using cloud computing can have on my productivity.
One of these systems is Eye-OS, which comes in two flavours, 1.9 Stable (Classic), which this article is based on, and 2.x Beta, which appears to be geared towards social networking.

Eye-OS is a very simple, intuitive interface with clear icons and a similar feel to most popular OS desktops. There is a nice look about Eye-OS, muted colours so not to distract the eye and a kind of corporate feel to the integration of the other applications, and it work under both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux running under Firefox.

Once you log on to Eye-OS the system 'boots' and presents you with a few icons on the desktop, an address book, Calender RSS Feeder and a Trash Can.

The desktop background can be changed via the system icon on the menu bar, and also do things such as alter your profile etc.

The Home icon takes you to your File Manager where you can..access your uploaded or created files!

Uploading files is a very straight forward affair, a simple file manager interface allows you to files, documents, music files and images to the on-line storage. This is fairly intuitive to use but it can take a long time if you store your files in separate folders as the up-loader closes the file selector when you choose a file. 

Sounds great and it is..but occasionally the file selection process doesn't go well and the OS just keeps bleeping at you.

The Applications icon takes you, predictable to the applications.

Clicking on the Word Processor Icon activates the Eye-OS word-processor, which initially looks very sleek and professional, but once you start to use it, it's limitations soon become apparent.

The lack of a spell checker, the inability to link to images stored in Eye-OS are first to show themselves, then there is the problem of it locking up and not being able to access the document makes it almost impossible to use, to such an extent that when I was writing this under Linux, I had to abandon using the Eye-OS and use OpenOffice just to work on the document, which is kinda self-defeating regarding being able to use this OS on any machine.

If fact so much trouble was writing this that I haven't saved the screen shot of the WP!

Streaming play back of your music files is accomplished via a somewhat primitive music player which only plays a track at a time, so, if you are doing another activity such as typing a document such as this, you have to stop. Go the the music player,...activate the next track...then come back to the document..not very productive. The sound quality is good for on-line streaming, subject to the usual stutters and lag problems.

Setting up the email seems to be a complex affair in Eye-OS, with many complicated setting needed to communicate to your email accounts. This could easily dissuade the new user or those stuck for time from setting it up. Indeed, it looks like one of the last tasks I will be performing to get the most out of Eye-OS.

Browsing is taken care of by Navigator, again a very minimalistic look and feel to it. There are limited functions to this application but it appears swift for just checking an web address but would be cumbersome for a serious surfer.

Overall, I cannot really recommend this on-line OS for some of the difficulties I have encountered and far from helping me to become more productive, the WP difficulties were actually getting in the way of this goal.

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OS v OS A Battle of Nerdish Proportions

My almost Borgish drive for cleaning up and sorting out my computing needs have further branched out towards the long over-due task of tidying my Netvibes Start Page. The usual routine of booting the host, running the guest virtual machine, starting Firefox and watching Netvibes load my Start Page and automatically go to my news feeds and that was OK, in a way, I was able to read the overnight news while having a cup of coffee.

But still, there was something a bit annoying about it too, which I discovered to be, I wasn't getting anything done! My calender was on one tab, my TO LIST on another and I was spending more time flipping from one tab to another that actually producing anything or being on top of anything. What I needed was access to a basic set of tools which I could access from any computer which would present the same information, files, articles, email communications, web design, whatever!

So, mulling over this while food shopping I picked up a copy of Webuser (Issue 235) which had an article on Online Operating Systems and Glide Browser OS had been given the Silver Review award and seemed just what I required.



"But what's the point of having another desktop running in a browser when you are using one on the computer already?" 
The first question which enters your thoughts and, at first consideration, a valid one. Surely if you are working at your computer you have email, image editing software, a word processor and communications software, why would you want to run one in a web browser?
But what if you are not at your computer? What if you are visiting friends for the weekend, have an article or an email which need to be sent, or need to touch up your website or check or make a calender appointment and your a PC and they are a mac? Or if you use a variety of OS configurations such as Linux Ubuntu on different machines in different locations? Or you want to do those activities from your mobile?
The beauty of the 'cloud computing' OS is, as long as you can get to the Internet, your computer is available along with all your files, your WP documents, your contacts, your images and media files, stored in the generous 30 gig storage in your free account. However, one serious drawback is if either you are unable to get online or the remote storage service is down, so it would be prudent if you didn't commit vital information without keeping a copy yourself. If you don't mind not losing it, or not getting access for a while, it is a great way of getting extra hard drive space at no cost.

"But doesn't the likes of Google offer these type of services already and Google are bring out Chromium OS?"
Yes and yes, but neither Google's current offerings, iGoogle, Google Docs and GMail, powerful and as effective as they are, match the slick, unified interface which Glide offers, and Chromium OS is currently under trials, well, not currently, as I am writing this..you get the idea. Must say, at the moment, I have not been as impressed by COS as I have been with GBOS.

The GBOS desktop interface is clean and intuitive to use with large immovable icons which does take the feel of being able to personalize your work area away, though you do have some limited ability to customise the background. When one of the icons are activated, a pop up window opens with the application running inside.

There are several utilities available for GBOS.

The first is an add-on for most major browsers which gives you access to many of the applications and feature of the desktop, your email, your calender, your WP, your image editor and file uploads.






The other is a desktop application which synchronizes between your PC and the file storage in the cloud and this may involve downloading some updates from Microsoft but there are links on the Glide website which make this procedure painless. A few hours after installing these updates, I received a further security update for one of those packages from Microsoft.

There are also two very comprehensive, pdf manuals for getting the best out of GBOS also available to download.

I did have had some initial problems with this, the pop-up window opened but failed to show the application, this was not a problem directly caused by GBOS as I have had this with other applications and appear to have located the problem to the Firefox extension Torbutton, and was forced to disable it.

The word processor



is rather colourful and responsive, It is able to export to a variety of standard file formats, PDF,Word,
Word 2007 and RTF



to several destinations and import links and media, thought the spell checker is somewhat confusing, marking any errors in yellow and presenting a dialogue box with a selections of options which is unfamiliar in it's sparsity and sometime disappears, and you have to start the spell check from the beginning. However, if you access your document via the toolbar rather that through the desktop, it opens in a tab, giving you access to a toolbar spell checker such as Google.

GBOS has given me a few niggles which can be somewhat frustrating.If you navigate away from the home page you have to log on again before it will reappear, annoying if you like to work flitting between open tabs.

The major difficulty that I have encountered has been with the down-loadable desktop synchronisation which just locks up and refuses to do anything, a major frustration. The inability to easily upload file to the OS will hamper productivity just what I don't want! I have already commented upon this problem on GBOS's Engage, a forum/communication room and await some feedback.

My first impressions are that Glide Browser OS will be a productive tool, and will integrate into how I write articles and blog posts, help organise my work-flow and keep me aware of when, where, who and most importantly, the Why of it all.

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