Re: Something that worked right

Mark, buy a 4, 8, or 16GB flash drive or even a USB hard drive like
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=262 ,
make it bootable, and install an OS on it.  Linux does this easily; I'm
sure someone has done it with Windows.  Now you've got a self-contained
system.  Plug it in to any PC, boot off the USB flash drive, and run
with it.  Caveats:
- You may want to pre-load a lot of drivers, at least network drivers so
you can download any others you'd need.
- USB is not as fast as ATA/EIDE or SATA; performance won't be as good.

Another option that does require some client software is to use the free
VMWare product.  Basically have a USB drive (flash or hard) that has the
VMWare installer and your preferred VM session(s).  When you visit a
'foreign' PC, install the VMWare and then run your VM(s).


Either way you leave no data on the host PC.  The VMWare can be
uninstalled if necessary.  If you already have a running environment
then http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/ will convert it to a VM
for you.



Finally, I don't have a link handy but there are products that let you
install & run apps from flash drives w/o touching the "C:" drive,
registry, etc.