The launch of Chrome OS could have get a lot of noise, but there’s no doubt that Jolicloud is one of the most promising operating systems for netbooks around. A couple of days ago they launch the Jolicloud pre-beta for the general public without the need to sign up for an invitation.

One option to get Jolicloud installed on your netbook, is downloading the ISO file, copying it to a USB drive and installing over your existing operating system.

But what if you don’t want to format your current OS installation to try Jolicloud. Ok, no problem, because they also made available Jolicloud Express, a 600MB installer that makes very straightforward to install Jolicloud from Windows and keep both systems running side by side.

Just download JolicloudExpress.exe to your hard drive and follow this simple steps:

1. Execute the file, a welcome screen will appear. Click on ‘Get Started’.
   
2. Now you have to create a login account. Fill in the fields with a computer username and password, and your computer nickname. Please note that the computer nickname should not contain spaces or special characters.
   
3. Here you can change the language, installation drive and size to allocate to Jolicloud, or leave the default configuration.
   
4. If you choose to set your own configuration, take into account that a smaller disk space will not impact on Jolicloud’s performance but on the amount of applications and file that you will be able to store locally.
   
5. The installation will begin and it will take a couple of minutes.
   
6. Once the installation is done restart your netbook and choose the “Jolicloud” on the startup menu.