WebOS Market Review

ReadWriteWeb writes "A number of small startups are trying their luck building a WebOS, which is a software platform that interacts with the user through a web browser and does not depend on any particular local operating system. Current WebOS contenders include XIN, YouOS, EyeOS, Orca, Goowy and Fold. There's also a bit of crossover with Ajax homepages like Netvibes, Pageflakes, Microsoft's Live.com and Google's start page. The key difference from Ajax homepages is that a WebOS is a full-on development platform. Indeed for developers, a big benefit is that a WebOS theoretically makes it easier to develop apps that work cross-platform. DHTML and Javascript are the main tools to do that, but not all developers think they are suitable."

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Don't be silly! Why, in five years time, everyone will be doing it! They'll want their Office Suite hosted in Germany, their Calender in the USA, their Webmail in Australia, their CRM in South Korea and they'll store their data in China. Everybody will trust these companies and individuals to keep their data safe and secure (Who wouldn't?!) and none of these business will go bust and take all of your data with them, oh no. It's the Web 2.0, don't you know? Who wants to use a computer these days, when you can use a client instead? It's far cooler! As long as you ignore the latency and bandwidth issues. And the disproportionate differences in functionality. And the security implications. And the costs. And the total lack of control you'll have as a user. Can't you see how much better it will be?

Links

[babbling]

Links to the various sites mentioned:
Xin [naltabyte.se]
YouOS [youos.com]
eyeOS [eyeos.org]
goowy [goowy.com]
Fold [fold.com]
Orca [orcaa.com]

The one place I can really see this used...

[biz0r]

...is in a corporate environment.

I mean think about it, you have a ton of desktops that must be kept up to date, must keep running for someone to be productive, and shouldn't really be used for personal purposes. Boot them all off of bootable CD's (or maybe even RW's so boot CD's can be cycled and some money saved when doing 'updates'), have them login to a central thin-client 'server'. This has several benefits:
1) Users are 'sandboxed'.
2) Easily control what someone can and cannot do.
3) Only 1 central machine (or cluster, depending) to manage and keep up-to-date.
4) Far less likely that someone will fsck their box.
5) If someone DOES end up messing up their box, just reboot and re-login.
6) Big brother can even more easily track you (good for company, albeit bad for you).
7) Whats that you say, no HD's to purchase or fail?
8) IT staff reduced as some of the support required drops.

Thats just a few off the top of my head...