Glide Cloud Free OS 4.0 [Mini-Review]

Click to visit www.glideos.com

Transmedia Corporation’s “Glide OS 4.0″ is an advertising-free, cloud-based operating system. You can access it through any web browser (including mobile browsers) and through a proprietary desktop app (Windows/Linux and OS X flavors). It has all the bells and whistles of Google’s free cloud services (calendar, email, documents, spreadsheets, etc.) and some other services not offered by Google:

• 30 GB of free online storage in the “GDrive” and a desktop app to automatically sync directories on your computer and in the cloud.
• The best web-based image editor I have seen. While it’s not exactly PhotoShop or GIMP quality, it will do the trick for basic use.
• An online version of PowerPoint called “Presenter.”
• It’s very customizable, e.g. you can set wallpaper and other custom options.

Frankly, I’m not doing justice to the scope of offerings available in Glide OS 4.0.  It’s truly a complete operating system that is remotely hosted. Glide OS 4.0 has been favorably reviewed by InformationWeek, PC World, CNET, eWeek and PC Magazine. Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal and David Pogue of the New York Times both wrote rave reviews about it.

A cloud-based  solution like Glide might be particularly appealing to those running Chrome OS on their netbooks (including the Flow variety I wrote about). Currently, there is nothing comparable though Office 2010 is supposed to have a cloud based version. As noted in many of the reviews of Glide, Microsoft is playing catch up with Transmedia’s free offerings. Glide OS 4.0 is completely free for up to 30 GB of storage. This would be more than sufficient for most and I intend to use it for my online backups. A 250 GB account runs $50 per year.

Check it out at http://glideos.com/.

[Thanks Brian]

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