It is likely that tightly-focuses appliance OSs will eventually reduce many people’s dependence on generic OSs simply because so much of Joe User’s internet activity is moving to webapps like (for eg) Google Docs or Flikr. Generic OSs will continue to have their uses, but as the web becomes the platform for applications, cloud-based OSs and web appliances will fulfill more and more of the typical user’s requirements.

Where litl’s model differs sharply from ChromeOS (besides the fact that our product is already on the market (available at litl.com) and so you don’t have to wait 12 months!), is that our cloud-based OS has been specifically designed to cater to many home user’s web needs. The litl card-based UI has been totally redesigned to provide a different experience and metaphor for the web – it does not resemble a browser. It is easy enough for anyone to get the hang of almost instantly not matter how technophobic they might be. We try to remove the layer between you and the web, for example, plug our device in and a very short time later you can be watching a slideshow of your photos merged from several different sources on your tv via HDMI or in our easel mode. Sharing your links and photos is incredibly easy on the litl webbook. And we have many litl channels (special apps that customize streaming media, content or webapps) in the pipeline. Soon we will be releasing an SDK so a community of developers can make their own channels for litl.

Cheers.

It remains to be seen if consumers will find this attractive, but most consumer services will likely be web-based ultimately. I do you he term web-based more loosely in that more complex web systems need to be developed for off-line work and applications.

NOt hard to imagine Chrome becoming my wife’s laptop at home and at work while my wife’s work desktop morphs into part of her corporate back office.

Jolly cloud is an interesting take on the desktop, I suggest you see what’s Gnome3 doing (and might as well come with Ubuntu Lucid Linx). My question is, as far as having a second OS on the computer, wouldn’t it just be better, if not easier (it never is just that easy), to install Jollycloud or Ubuntu instead of Chrome (and have something that’s more complete and allows access to files when/if Windows crashes)?

Take a look at Morphin Morphix and their Firefox only Linux distro. I wonder if Firefox is able to answer to Chrome OS with their own spinoff.

Microsoft is like this enormous rock sitting by the sea, one cannot hope to get it to move by pushing but the waves, albeit slowly, will move it, and if not, they will at least succeed in wearing it.

Sebastian