Wanna try XP, Office and Ubuntu (6.06 & 8.04), just to see the OS or try installing some app and test, or whatever your purpose may be?

We know using virtualization solution like  VirtualBox can help here but there exist simpler solution which doesn’t require any installation at all !!

Just head over to JPC-2, and choose your OS, simple. It runs entirely in the browser and doesn’t require you to install anything.

I tried putting my hands on this Webapp and found it’s quite useful, though tad slow on my above average desktop (3 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 Gigs of RAM and quite decent motherboard – Intel DG31PR), I’s using Windows XP with Office. Still I pushed myself to see this app further. Here’s my observation:

There’s two option to launch each OS – Applet and Web start. Essentially, applet is the stripped down java instance running inside the browser, so the quirks were obvious as well. I constantly found the taskbar is not displaying at all and there’s no way to scroll to the taskbar as well. There is a button called Tools which was also not working. The right top of the applet instance was showing warning like icon which I figure was only due to some error (I didn’t figured out the reason though :P).

Then I tried putting my hands on Web Start, a all out java instance which runs on system java and not on browser java (Chrome as for example). This method creates a java web start window which in turn opens the same applet which browser was opening and unfortunately all those previous issues were present and nagging.

Finally I figured out that I’m not supposed to see the taskbar at all and XP is much stripped down version than I’d expected. But still you can see the Excel, Powerpoint and Word icon right there on desktop, clicking on them will get your work done. Also, some basic stuff can be done there. But I still don’t understand opening the Solitaire by default. Their choice, what else can I say!

I’m yet to see other options provided by the website but I think it’s quite good effort although major issues really bog you down but I expect them to sort these things out as soon as possible. Currently we cannot depend on this solution. Also, I’m quite concerned about use of propriety software like XP and Office, maybe there’s some legal aspect we or them have to deal with. I suggest to proceed with caution.

As a lasting statement I must say it’s quite a neat, and nifty solution. A must try Webapp for all in need and enthusiasts, just don’t depend on it in any way though!