Small Business Reading Room

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

A new way of looking at the PC

No, I don't mean there is a new cyber-brain-jack to replace the video display.

Engineers at IBM have come up with a new way to run a virtual machine from an Apple iPod. The virtual machine can run on any pc and includes all of the soul of the PC (Data, Personal Settings and Applications). In this setup, the PC actually boots up from the iPod. Read more about it at c|Net News.com .

Meanwhile, the latest edition (September 6, 2005) of PC Magazine outlines how to store and run 22 apps from a USB drive. The 512 Mb sample drive setup includes:
OpenOffice,
Windows CE Emulator,
Trillian,
AntiVir,
Firefox,
Sunbird,
Thunderbird,
Pass2Go,
FileZilla,
Ad-Aware SE Personal,
Foxit BDF Reader,
XMPlay.
This is an interesting approach to using the USB key. And it works now.

PC Magazine is also reporting that Memina has developed a 4Gb Keychain Flash Drive. That is enough space to store a complete DVD movie or over 1,000 mp3's.

I think it is clear to see what capabilities are just around the corner. We may all have our own PC soul on a stick, and use the guts of any PC to access it. This will increase privacy while making the risk of misplacing the little memory stick even greater.

How else could this be used? Could this unleash future business opportunities? Use your imagination...

posted by Larry at 9:22 AM - permalink 0 comments

Small Business Reading Room

A new way of looking at the PC

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