Today we reluctantly step away from the Google-Yahoo-Microsoft media blitz to bring you a helpful advice column from the pros over at BNET.

Rick Broida recently wrote a useful article entitled “How to Choose an Online Desktop.” As you probably know, an online desktop is an essential tool for those people who regularly use more than one computer and want to have all the info they need at hand no matter which computer they’re on at any given time. In short, it’s a necessary feature for today’s busy entrepreneur, or for anyone who travels regularly for his or her job.

Mr. Broida runs down his favorites:

Goowy One of the Web’s first desktops, Goowy serves up all the basics — contact and calendar management, file storage, IM, etc. — along with cool, custom widgets for things like weather, RSS feeds, and to-do lists. I’d say this is the most practical, and functional, of the three

Jooce A still-in-beta newcomer, Jooce offers by far the slickest Web desktop: Everything lights up, fades, slides, and so on. It’s also relatively limited at this point, offering only file storage, instant messaging, and embedded YouTube videos. But it’s worth trying if only for the way-cool rotating 3D desktops (pictured).

YouOS Like Linux in your browser, YouOS offers a robust desktop environment — but one that’s not nearly as warm, fuzzy, and user-friendly as Goowy and Jooce. Even so, it’s amazing to see how close YouOS comes to approximating the real thing.

All three online desktops are free to use, and you can take Goowy and YouOS for a spin without even signing up for an account. I’m not positive any of the three are ready for prime time, but there’s no debating how handy it would be to have a unified desktop that’s Web-accessible instead of just a few scattered files and documents. What do you think? Would you ever use an online desktop?

Click here to check out the original article.