Jolicloud: The Hype and the VAPOR.

Jolicloud, ostensibly a "cloud application OS" is really nothing more than a new window manager. It's Ubuntu with all the control and features stripped away to prevent you from doing anything not approved by "Joli." You can't remove icons that promote paid features. It is in short, the AOL of linux.

1. It lacks any specific "Netbook" applications!
2. It has no 3G ability whatsoever!
3. It actually blocks and hides useful internet applications!
4. It has no real "cloud" computational ability!

These four strikes are reason enough to uninstall it immediately. But, I spent some time playing with it, looking around for hidden settings, and trying to find the control panel which IS there, but buried under "legacy" applications. Control Panel is legacy? How very AOL...

This is BigBrother meets Linux. It is seriously the AOL of the linux world.

Not only do I find it abhorrently false in its claims of being a cloud application Operating System, but it's not even vaguely cloudlike except in the vagueness of it all.

It's a cloud all right, it's vaporware.

Review of features:
No Cloud Features. zero points.
No Special Features. zero points.
Removes netbook functions. -100 points. [does the complete opposite of what one would expect*]
Removes user accessible controls. -100 points.

The only other "software" I've ever reviewed in my life that got -200 points is AOL.

Jolicloud really is the AOL of Linux.

* Negative points are 20 for misleading statements, 50 for failure, 100 for actual opposite performance. Worst score possible is 100.

Reasons you might actually WANT to use Jolicloud:

- You love having no ability to control the experience.
- You hate netbooks and just wanted a small laptop.
- You have no internet connection anyway.
- You've always wanted to write a ground-up 3G/4G phone system.

Well, now's your chance. Me, I'm removing this trash this weekend and going back to Ubuntu. The only advantage in trying out Linux based distributions is that I don't need to reformat the drive. I can use use the package manager to strip out the "jolly" and leave Ubuntu. Update, reboot, and I'm done.

Ubuntu has some issues too, but nothing on the order of powers that Jolicloud does. My recommendation is to never install Jolicloud at all. Go directly to Ubuntu for your netbook.