Virtualization for the Masses
I hate to get sucked into "the next great thing", but I read about this "next great thing" in the San Jose Mercury News last weekend, and downloaded the trial today and gave it a whirl. The toy of the day: MojoPac. It has an unlikely name, but the concept is that you can carry your "digital mojo" with you, on any USB device. Then, on any Windows XP SP2 machine, you plug in the device, and in seconds, you're running your own desktop, with your own applications installed.
(The trial version is free. The retail copy is supposedly $49. I haven't plunked down the cash yet.)
It seemed unlikely, so I gave it a try. Downloaded the trial version, installed it, and it sure works. (IE7 is not currently happy in their latest build, so I went with FireFox, which works great.) Installed Live Messenger, walked to a different computer, plugged in the USB key on which I'd installed MojoPac, and darned if I didn't have my own desktop with my own IM client available to me.
Unfortunately, it's not really aimed at IT professionals (oh, yeah, they give us "lip service" on their site, but clearly, they're aiming at kids who want to carry their saved games to a library computer, and continue playing). I can't see how to control the balance of memory that the MojoPac virtual PC uses. It seems to run rather slowly, even after I followed their optimization steps, on a USB key (of course, what the heck do I want--I'm using incredibly slow hardware, right?)
On the other hand, when I go to visit my parents, and don't want to whip out my laptop to get connected, check email, and IM, this is a great solution. Just stick the USB key into the local computer, and I've got my own environment.
It's not going to replace VMWare or VPC, but MojoPac has some serious legs, I think. It's an engineering feat, and I'd like to know how they did it. In any case, give it a try, and see what you think.