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Portable Operating System
 

Has anyone here used a portable operating system before? I am going to download one, but curious to know if ebay/amazon would see this portable operating system as a new computer? If you've never heard of this it gives you basically a computer on the go.

You get:

Email
Web Browser
Backup Utility
audio player
antivirus
office suite
and more............. just to name a few

Here is the link: PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB, portable and cloud drives

This looks interesting. If nobody has experience with this, a test may be in order.

If this really works, I don't think this should be out in the open, seriously.

Way ahead of you..

It looks nice but I can already see it's saturation point. I use all the apps already accept the operating system (the weak link).

I have no usb drive at the moment, so if anyone can test this please let me know. Thanks for moving this aspkin lol.

I have booted Windows many times from a USB drive in the past.

This PortableApps is not an OS but rather a set of applications that run on an OS.

So if I am not wrong, that probably means the apps would read and write data from the computers hard drive and not the USB they are running from.

edit: seems like the apps are fully portable, the firefox cookies are stored on the USB.

Though the flash objects are accessed from the computers hard drive.

I'm going to have to give this a try soon, nothing is installed, once you take the usb out, the portable apps disappear, and when you place it into the next computer you can start where you left off. It seems since everything is coming from the usb, ebay and amazon would think it's a new computer, because it's reading all of this from the usb drive, everything is labeled as portable even the web browsers, nothing is coming from the computer, you're just using each computer to load your portable apps, it even has it's own start menu. Here's a video of it in action:

^^^ Though seems like the portable firefox is still accessing the flash objects from the computer instead of them being stored onto the USB.

You're talking about the Firefox at the beginning of the video, right? If so, that Is his actual Firefox from his desktop, because he Is showing how to install the portable apps, giving you all of the steps, step by step. It's not the portable firefox from the portable apps start up menu.

I am just going to have to give this a try myself when I get the chance, I just hope my dreams don't get crushed, lol.

Portable apps will still leave traces of cookies and etc inside of its persistent container/folders, and are not an operating system.

If you are looking for an operating system, look into live linux distros such as Ubuntu.

No, I tested it with a local firefox and the portable firefox, they share the same flash objects.

Must need a portable flash player plugin or something, to have its own flash objects.

@ShadyOne, that sucks

@BiN4RY, looking up live ubuntu now

Yeah it does. The flash objects are always stored locally and beyond the control of the portable browser.

So you would be using the flash objects of every PC you run the portable app on and you would be leaving behind any you created.

U-bun-tu? that's a virtual OS deal?

No it's an operating system that you can download, Thanks @BiN4RY, I will make sure I have enough room first, then I'll dual boot Live Ubuntu with Windows Vista.

You don't have to "dual-boot", Ubuntu live mode runs perfectly fine off of its CD without needing permanent installation.
If you don't feel like downloading a 700MB ISO file, you can even ask them to mail a copy to you.

And of course, the best part about Linux distros is that they're free.

So it's an OS and you can run it off a USB? So a completely brand new comp setup so to speak.

Yes.

There are also tools that lets you build windows based live operating system, but the resultant build are often very problematic.

Linux :hail:

Live Ubuntu looks cool too, also no viruses!!!!!

Very useful information in this post!
Great find, i will be trying this out in a few days.

@WTRTB don't try the portable operating system, try Ubuntu instead.

Desktop | Ubuntu

i have used there portable apps and os's before and they run fine. the only thing is that there is a usb id inside the system showing use but as long as this method is not abused i see no reason for amazon to recognize it. But anything over used or misused can be burned! as we all know.

also try virtualbox - i was talking to some of the Execs about this over a week ago.

Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind.


Surley that includes flash cookies .


i have used mini xp on flash drives and also linux, just as easy to download a copy of hiruns bood cd and use the mini xp on there.


the above apps sound good, im going to test it over the next few days, thanks for the link.

remember that port appz without an os on the usb drive require a reg edit to install on the host comp to run.

I've been running slax (linux based) on a usb stick. It works great for me and for amazon accounts, you have a fresh OS, for every cd you burn one too or USB Stick.

:bump: Just thought I'd resurrect this since it has alternatives to using VMWARE. If anyone has anything else to add, please do......................

If going down the VMWare route, you would need a PC capable of running the OS & the Virtual OS. Easiest way round this would be to use VirtualBox & assign part of the Hardware to the Virtual OS.


;)

EDITS: Noticed virtualbox has been mentioned up above, I would say it is 'easier,simpler' to use compared to VMware.