Review: G.ho.st OS...nothing haunting about it.

Recently I came across a variety of online virtual desktops, which claim that they are Virtual Operating Systems and give you the ultimate experience across PCs. In fact, one of the early birds in this category was Desktoptwo. Desktoptwo came into limelight almost 2 years ago, and now we have a dozen more competitors which are fighting for the spot. At first I thought of comparing each of them, but once I reviewed the G.ho.st OS I felt it deserved a full blog review.
G.ho.st stands for Global Hosted Operating System, and they have got a unique and creative domain name g.ho.st. They call themselves a virtual computer. At first when I came across this, I was pretty laid back. I had already tried Desktoptwo. I hardly used it though, because I never found real use for a virtual OS, where the network bandwidth is still at premium, these flash based players take ages to load, and even though they offer web storage, it takes hours to upload stuff, and download them back. But, still I just went on to the ghost portal, still curious about the peculiar domain name.
Once the portal opened, I was pulled in. The designers have done a very good job, with nice artwork, and appealing logo and colors. I involuntarily clicked on sign up. Again, a minimal and simple sign up took place and I got the confirmation mail. Now, I logged on to the OS. I was expecting at least a few 10 minutes before I could log on, since I have a 64kbps network connection. But amazingly I could see my desktop hardly within 3 minutes. The desktop gave a Vista like feel, with icons, designed in a cartoony way. There were a few gadgets lying over, a ghost tour, clock, some sticky notes, etc. The tour was more of pictures and less text which compelled me to finish it. It was pretty informative.
You have a virtual OS framework and you allow 3rd party applications to run over your framework, that is basically what ghost is upto. So, logically it does qualify for the name, virtual PC. Next I went through the start menu, there were applications found in a normal linux installation like accessories, games, widgets etc. It also had a browser app, so it would be actually a browser inside a browser, a nice way to proxy. Next I went to the mail client, rather a rich app like outlook with many features like calender, address book etc, The mail can be configured to a pop client in your mobile phone or so, so that you get your g.ho.st mails into it. Also this email client itself can download mails from other players like GMail, Live etc, through POP configurations. That was useful, I have configured my mails into this. You have another option to configure your logins, something like the OpenID. All your login-passwords can be stored in this application which automatically authenticates to these services once you log into your ghost OS. You have ZOHO Office suite, Google Docs, and many other third party apps, that you can run in your Ghost.
Now, the techie part, the OS fully works on Flash, though it was indeed light and fast, there might be incompatibility issues where you don't have flash. G.ho.st also provides 5 GB space, which is not readily available, you get 1 GB initially and rest 4 when you refer 4 friends. You can use ftp to upload and download stuff on to your ghost web drive. I tested g.ho.st in Internet explorer, Opera and Firefox, it worked without a difference. Unlike Desktoptwo, I feel like working from inside my G.ho.st OS, it gives me a feeling of a conventional OS and amazingly fast too. Only negative I found is that they used the peculiar domain name even for the email ids, like codevalley@g.ho.st Also I found occasionally there are login problems, where you get stuck in the login screen. But, ghost is still in Alpha stage, since April 2007, let us wait for the main release.
I would recommend you g.ho.st, and is worth trying out. It gives you an out of the box experience, also did I tell you that ghost is a joint venture by Palestinians and Israelis?

G.ho.st website

codevalley