Joost is a new way of watching TV on the Internet. I’m running the latest beta version (0.10.1) on Windows Vista Home Premium with two gigabytes of RAM and it SUCKS.

For starters, every time I login I have to re-enter my “Personal Profile.” This is personal information which consists of my first and last name, date of birth, and gender. I presume they need this information to support their advertising model — which I actually don’t mind giving them. I just don’t understand why they need it every time I login.

Joost is also slow to startup. When it finally does launch, it has an obnoxious opening montage that you can’t bypass, and it’s set at a volume level that you cannot control. And unless you’re a P. Diddy or Laguna Beach fan — the Channel Catalog sucks. You can find a better selection at EZTV … and the only thing you need to view their shows is the DivX Codec.

Joost does have a decent looking interface. It’s pretty, I’ll give it that. But the on-screen display overlays mediocre quality video, and the controls are nonintuitive and clunky to say the least. For instance, you have to select “My Joost” then go into the “Widget Menu” to access “Advanced Settings.” These “advanced” settings consist of basic Parental Controls, and options for launching and exiting the program — and you must be in full-screen mode to access them.

Upon exiting Joost (if it doesn’t stop responding first), I’ve noticed the tvprunner.exe process remains in the Windows Task Manager, and I have to manually end the process in order to take back the massive amount of memory it consumes.

In my opinion, Joost is the poor mans Windows Media Center. If you have Windows Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate, then you don’t need Joost. I recommend you stay far away from it. But if you’re running Windows XP or OS X, or you just really want to fuck your system up, kick me an email and I’ll send you an Invite.