USB FlashDrives The New PC?

olddotter writes "Yahoo has an article about how large capacity USB drives might be redefining the concept of the personal computer. The article is windows specific, but think knopix on a flash drive." From the article: "When you check into an average hotel room and find -- alongside the alarm clock, hair dryer and DVD player that once were bring-your-own items but now are as standard as the furniture -- a cheap PC for guests to plug into, as our truly personal computing environment travels with us."

Comments

Don't Forget..

[Pharmboy]

Yea, but you still have to bring your own virus and spyware. It will be years til they provide that.

Right...

[xeon4life]

Yes, because Knoppix is so much more familiar to the Slashdot crowd than Windows...

Re:Right...

[gl4ss]

for being easily booted from usb.. damn right!

would you conduct your business from a windows pc.. sitting in a hotel room? thats like using old sheets.

Is the network the flashdrive?

[cgrand]

I'm puzzled: once I was told the network is the computer and now I learn the flashdrive is the computer.
I'm totally at a lost.

Re:Well, that's great

[Xeo 024]

I don't think over-sized USB drives would sell very well.

Think about it, if you had a USB drive that was the size of your car, you'd look really stupid if you lost it.

"Damn! Where did I park my USB drive again?"

Re:Windows?

[Pharmboy]

Author probably never tried to take his Windows XP disk and boot in different box with different mainboard, video and network card...

Piece of cake. Just install flashdrive, answer Yes and NO alot, reboot 12 times, download two drivers each time, then call for authorization to activate your computer yet again. Setup time would be less than two hours each time. This is much better than bringing your own laptop....

Re:Checkout the screenshots

[Anonymous Coward]

You can see them posting on Slashdot. That's some Anonymous Coward!

You'd think at least they'd be spreading dissent against governments. Not worried about being flamed.

You insensitive clod, I'm an Anonymous Coward!

Re:Well, that's great

[nizo]

One solution would be to sell flashdrives with a builtin lcd monitor and keyboard; not only would they be hard to lose but the extra functionality would be awesome!

Re:Well, that's great

[HermanAB]

So? Just add a chain and a paint bucket filled with cement on the other end. You'll never lose the key again. BTW, I saw that on a farm...

We used to do that with floppy disks

[HermanAB]

Geez, I must be getting old. These young whipper snappers are so used to networked computers that they all think removable media is a new idea...

Re:We used to do that with floppy disks

[HermanAB]

Hmm, never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of punch cards... ;-)

Bleach Time.

[twitter]

a windows pc.. sitting in a hotel room? thats like using old sheets.

Ewww, a keyboard in a motel room. Now Wash Your Hands.

The difference between the sheets, keys and Windozed is that Windoze lets 250,000,000 13 year old punks put their seed on the machine from anywhere. Now that's dirty.

Re:Oh?

[Mr. Bad Example]

> How do you know it has no OS?

Build a bridge out of it!

Oh, wait....sorry. That's witches. Carry on.

Re:Or you can go one better...

[dcapel]

Booting off a computer that you removed the hard drive, and then booted with Tinfoilhat Linux after disconnecting any contact with the outside world (ethernet, wifi, etc), and setting up your Faraday cage, and turning the impossible-for-cameras-to-read mode on in TFH Linux, then after your done burning another image into the CRT monitor, and after your done whipping the hard disk (just for good measure ;-)), and then inducing a strong electromagnetic field over the whole computer (choose your wavelength, I prefer gamma) before incinerating it, all while wearing your tinfoil hat and using the computer's hardware to generate mindcontrol blocking noise is *BIG BREATH* most definitely safe.