Carry your Windows desktop in your pocket
Off and on I have mentioned USB thumb (AKA flash or key) drives and noted their rapid evolution in capacity and utility. For some time now it has been possible to put certain applications, including the Firefox browser, on a thumb drive and operate them from any computer. Now comes a new company with software that allows you to basically put your Windows XP computer on a thumb drive and run it from any other XP machine. An article at TechWeb reports
A Mountain View, Calif. startup on Tuesday launched software that can duplicate a user’s Windows desktop, complete with applications and data, and stuff it into a USB flash drive, iPod, or even cell phone.
Once that device is plugged into a host computer running Windows XP — a public machine at an Internet caf, for example, or in a hotel’s business center — RingCube Technologies Inc.’s MojoPac software creates a personalized, secure environment.
Obviously, you need a large capacity thumb drive, 1 GB is the recommendation. However, these days 1 GB drives are quite commonly offered for around $30. The software itself is going to sell for $50, with a present introductory price of $30. A 30-day trial is available and the download and other information are at this link. You have to register to download and use the trial. I tried it today and, in the short time that I had to test it, it looks good. If nothing else, it provides a way to use the Internet with either Internet Explorer or Firefox in a way that is isolated from the main computer. Note that whatever is done on the USB drive stays there and does not affect the main computer.
The home page states that all Windows applications will run. However, that is a little misleading and on another page there is a list of what is known to run. The software is new and is apparently still being tweaked. For example, consumer versions of Microsoft Office (Product Activation problem?) won’t work but the company is said to be doing an update to fix that.
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Comments
As I understand it, any software you want to use goes on the USB device. So you’re right that a 1GB drive may not be enough for many people. I get the impression that the Mojo software is still sort of a beta version and their explanations are not always very clear. When I installed it, I did a quick job and didn’t get many applications. When I get more time I am going back to see how much I can get on the USB drive. I have a 4GB unit. I will report back on what I find out.
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This has wonderful possibilities. But I couldn’t figure out from the information on the web site just how to get any productivity out of it. Must you install the needed software (i.e. Photoshop, Office, etc.) on the removable device along with Mojo or does Mojo rely on software already installed on the host computer? If the former, you’d need a good deal more than 1GB to make it useful. If the latter, you’d be continually betting that the host computer would contain the application software you needed.