my pc anywhere

[kalos]

hello!

I want to literally have my pc with me, without having to carry the hardware

ie, i want to somehow be able to make in any pc, my own winxp installation to appear, with its settings, its shortcuts, its macros, its customizations, its programs, its files etc

it should work flawlessly in any pc, it should save all possible actions i may do, eg manipulate files, install software, etc

it should leave no trace to the pc i work on, and it should be secure (not being able to be monitored by the host pc, or to get virus, etc)

is this possible?

thanks!

[KynloStephen66515]

Tried something like Teamviewer - You just remote connect to your home PC, from ANY machine.

[40hz]

Window 8 promises to provide that capability. Microsoft calls it Windows To Go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhSM67AWrew

And here's something very interesting. Apparently Windows To Go even works with an Apple MacBook Pro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deq_TpjmxyY

I don't get impressed too easily when it comes to PC related technology. And hardly ever by anything Microsoft does. But portably running Win8 on Mac hardware is definitely cool IMHO.



Of course, for roughly the last 10 years, you could also take your PC anywhere using a "live' Linux distro. Penguins Rule!

[f0dder]

Just log onto your home PC via Remote Desktop - possibly through a SSH tunnel, if you're paranoid.

Problem solved

[4wd]

Seeing as it's WinXP, perhaps MojoPac^w would be preferable?

MojoPac is an application virtualization product from RingCube Technologies. MojoPac turns any USB 2.0 storage device, into a portable computing environment. The term "MojoPac" is used by the company to refer to the software application, the virtualized environment running inside this software, and the USB storage device that contains the software and relevant applications. MojoPac supports popular applications such as Firefox and Microsoft Office, and it is also high performance enough to run popular PC Games such as World of Warcraft and Half-Life 2.

MojoPac has been discontinued but can still be downloaded.

Download [Softpedia]

How to use it: Lifehacker

Otherwise, Portable VirtualBox.

Window 8 promises to provide that capability. Microsoft calls it Windows To Go.

It looks like that will be in W8 Enterprise^w only which kind of limits it.

[Edvard]

I'm with f0dder; Remote Desktop through SSH is the way to go, it's native, more secure (with SSH), and the performance is very good to tolerable, given a decent net connection.

Now, if you happen to have a "Home" or below version of Windows, that's a no-go; try TightVNC:
http://www.tightvnc.com/download.php/
There are portable versions from PortableApps or PenDriveApps.  Just start the VNC server on your machine at home, and carry the portable client on a USB stick.
I'd also recommend TigerVNC, as the performance may be better, but there aren't any portable versions out AFAIK.

For an easy link to your router back home, use DynDNS or No-IP .

If network access isn't your thing, I'll +1 4wd's suggestion of installing into a Portable VirtualBox.  

[Renegade]

Another option is to get a portable drive and just run your Windows installation from it in a VM. You then don't need to muck around with networks (that are always ever so reliable right when you need them ), and have it 100% available. You might want to make sure that you have a VM player ready to install on other computers though, and might want to check into one for Windows and Mac, and maybe Linux.

You will have some kinds of performance penalties as you're running a VM, but you would always have everything available, irrespective of network reliability or speed. This would make it possible to do things like play movies or music, which aren't practical using a remote desktop solution.