ZDNet reports on an interesting tool being developed by IBM — the SoulPad:
The SoulPad could let users carry their computer’s data, applications and personal settings on their mobile phone or digital music player
Researchers at IBM are testing software that would let you tote your home or office desktop around on an iPod or similar portable device, so that you could run it on any PC.
The virtual computer user environment setup is called SoulPad, and consumers install it from an x86-based home or office PC. SoulPad uses a USB or FireWire connection to access the network cards for connecting to the Internet, the computer’s display, the keyboard, the main processor and the memory, but not the hard disk.
As the article points out, this is not dissimlar to the idea of USB keydrive-based programs, which we’ve gone into some detail here in the past.
Sounds like a windows version of the Blackdog Linux mobile personal server. Like the IBM device, it doesn’t use the host PC’s harddrive.
Griff
You might want to check out Black Dog ( http://www.projectblackdog.com/site/product.html ), which I read about in the LinuxWorld roundups. It’s a USB computer that you can plug into your Windows box. When you’re done, just unplug.