Netvibes
Speed and simplicity are the two biggest assets of Netvibes. What I really like about this site is that you can keep it as straightforward or as complex as you like – and in either case it will deliver.
As with iGoogle, the design is pretty minimalistic, but it's not as bland. The gradients, color schemes and the overall feel of Netvibes is very Web 2.0 – clean and fresh! Though it has a pretty cool widget for search (which shows the immediate result within the widget box itself), you'll have to click on the search box to activate it. I'd have loved it if the widget had the same cursor grabbing function as iGoogle, but then again, the search here is a widget, not a part of the base page.
Netvibes too has a tabular page setup, and all the widgets in the tabs are refreshed each time you launch it. The best part is there's absolutely no lag in the startup time, which makes it very functional.
There are a lot of personalization options. The themes here are not as dynamic as in iGoogle but they look pretty good. There are little other customization options like adding icons and changing colors of your tabs to keep things personal. Surprisingly, you don't have an option to select the number of widget columns on your pages. You have to stick to the default three-column setup, which is ideal for most monitors, but kind of wasted on a widescreen. You can however, adjust the width of the columns by simply pulling them at the edges.
If you're not that heavily into Google, Netvibes makes a pretty good startup page. It looks great, is functional, and has some awesome widget support. You should definitely give it a try.
Pros
- Excellent widgets
- Clean Web 2.0 interface
- Fast loading times
Cons
- Doesn't feature all of Google's services
- Limited to 3 columns per page
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