Windows 7 RC shutdowns? Try Jolicloud

As of March 1st, users running release candidate versions of Windows 7 have been experiencing periodical blackouts every two hours. These reboots will continue until June first, when the software will expire. If you are one of the millions of users suffering from this predicament, we suggest you head out to www.jolicloud.com, and download the pre-beta release. It's free, and it doesn't have an expiry date. It's easily one of the most user friendly Linux distros around, and it ties in very well with a variety of cloud based apps.At the same time, it isn't cloud-only, like Google's Chromium OS, and gives you the ability to add a number of apps like Open Office and VLC player for offline use.

 

Well packaged
It's a 600 MB download, the OS can be installed side-by-side to your Windows installation, and is selectable from the boot menu. You don't need to make a partition, or use the command line at any point during the installation. The user interface is well thought out, and optimised for netbook usage, it boots real fast and lets you access all your apps in a few clicks from the home screen. Each app has a large icon similar to the iPhone interface (though we're afraid to draw any such comparisons with all the patent minefields around).
Plenty of Apps
While Jolicloud is positioned as a Netbook OS, it works well on Atom based nettops, or desktops as well. It was a delight to hear the sound right after the first boot, and everything worked - the display, sound, network, YouTube, playback of MP3s and MP4 files, instant messenger, browser, you name it... Additional apps can be downloaded once you register online at Jolicloud, the creators have given it a social angle, sending app notifications to all your friends similar to Facebook. The featured list of apps includes Open Office, Thunderbird, Firefox, Opera, Skype, Twitter, Boxee, Google Chrome, VLC player, Spotify, Netvibes, Adobe Air, just to name a few. With just a few clicks these can be downloaded installed right from the App Directory.
Secure
Jolicloud runs on a Debian and Ubuntu flavor of Linux, and is perhaps the best replacement for Windows XP, given all the security holes in it. It has extensive driver support that covers practically every netbook in the market. For a pre-beta, the OS was very stable over a day's usage. It's an excellent OS for the netbook, and a well polished OS that broadband users can download and personalise for free. We are not sure about driver support for legacy hardware, whether it would work on older machines. We will investigate this in the future.

Additional reads:
Jolicloud FAQ
Jolicloud's tech specs
Thinkdigit's review of Jolicloud