CosmoPOD gives you a free, online desktop. You get 1GB of storage and a KDE desktop with applications such as browsers, instant messengers, an office suite and more. Surprisingly, it’s not that slow. Sure, if you type something into OpenOffice it may take an extra second for it to appear. I didn’t find this much slower than when I was connecting to another computer on my network using VNC.

To sign up, all you need to do is to provide a username and a password. You can then download the program which allows you to connect to your desktop. There also used to be a Java client so you could use it at school or work to evade filters.

I don’t really trust third parties with my instant messaging passwords so thats out of the question for me. I also can’t see any way of transferring files from your CosmoPOD area to your local hard drive which would be really useful.