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Jumping From Computer To Computer
Roland Piquepaille writes "Imagine a world where computers become so ubiquitous that the idea of carrying a laptop will almost be laughable, a world where any computer could be your computer! According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, this is the goal of Intel Research Pittsburgh's Internet Suspend/Resume (ISR) project, a project that may one day let your work jump from computer to computer without interruption by using the Internet, distributed file systems, and virtual machines. When the non-proprietary technology becomes available, a user will suspend a task on the computer he's working on, and resume this work using another computer in another part of a city or several thousands of miles away. The second system will look identical to the first one, with the same files and applications opened. This technology would also ease OS upgrades or eliminate the pain coming from a hard disk failure. The project has even a feature named Rollback which would permit to go back in time, eliminating these pesky viruses. A pilot test will start this fall, so don't expect to be able to use ISR for a while. You'll find more details and references in this overview."
Sun's has had this working for years on Sun Ray thin clients. Your working session is frozen when you remove a smart card, and is resumed on another appliance when you put the smart card back in. It works all over the country, so a session can be resumed anywhere.
A pendrive/ipod (in size, harddrive space) bluetooth enabled device that carried core applications and your home folder? Wether in be a unix-style home folder layour, or an xml/generic folder layout that has an abstraction to windows/unix/linux(various conflicting layouts in unixes). and OFCOURSE, the drive, preferably solid-state, would be encrypted with a public key...
I walk up to an unused machine, sit down, the login script/screen detects my bluetooth device, notices that is a user account storage device, and prompts for a username/password that is checked against the device via encrypted bluetooth... If successful, links, shortcuts, small apps(putty), documents, contacts, email, etc.. are all 'loaded' onto the local machine, as if i were at my home computer...
Even better if these were on a linux/x11 setup so we could do some automatic screen attach/detach scripts on all processes/programs running!
I don't see what the big deal is here.
The big deal is making it easy for Joe User to do it every day without thinking. I should remind you that Joe User is no scripting wizard.
Intel's Digital Briefcase will be realized with the introduction of the following technologies:
1) High-density, low-power, nonvolatile memory
2) Integrated logic & wireless
At this point, the Personal Server becomes feasible. A specification for "personal server compliant" operating systems helps any compliant PC in the world "log on to you", as they say in Soviet Russia. All of your preferences down to the last minute detail (wallpaper, favorites, browsing history, etc) will immediately be transferred to this particular PC and it will be as if it were your own.
This is close. Since Microsoft will try to "embrace and extend" this to the point that we can't use these devices without Windows, the open-source community will need to rapidly develop this into an open, robust standard that will work with all PCs. I give it two years... Power consumption will be the biggest issue. Otherwise, you could stick a WiFi link on an iPod and do it now (though I suppose it could be done with a cable that also supplies power).
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