Carry Your Computer Desktop On A Stick

A Silicon Valley startup, MokaFive, has figured out how to separate your data from your computer so you can carry your data with you on a memory stick or any flash-based device.

Not only that, you can transfer your data–your contacts, documents, passwords, browser bookmarks and anything else you’ve stored locally on your computer–between different machines running Intel x86 chips.
So far these include Windows PCs, Macs and a new variation of Linux called BareMetal that’s developed by MokaFive.

The company was founded by a Stanford computer science professor, Monica Lam, and three of her students after star venture capitalist Vinod Khosla discovered their technology–called LivePC–and pushed until they let him invest, according to MokaFive CEO Bill Demas.

MokaFive has solved several problems that the high-tech industry has been working on for over 10 years, Demas said, partly because it takes advantage of new trends in computing–like virtualization, which abstracts software from hardware–that weren’t available to its predecessors. (Remember Sun Microsystems’ SunRay and Oracle’s Network Computer?).

LivePCs can be automatically updated with software patches or new versions of software, restore themselves to a clean state when you reboot them if they get attacked, or self-destruct if your memory stick is stolen or lost.

Computer professionals like LivePCs and have downloaded them over 80,000 times, Demas said. But MokaFive wants one day to attract small businesses and soccer moms.

If you want to try LivePC, download it from MokaFive’s Web site. The size of your desktop will be limited by the size of your storage device.

This article is contributed by John Whaley - Founder and CTO of MokaFive. MokaFive is the next generation desktop virtualization company managing the lifecycle of virtual “Desktops as a Service.”

Carry Your Computer Desktop On A Stick / Author: John Whaley

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