2. Using MokaFive's Live PC Environments

I tested MokaFive on Windows, and was able to successfully import a virtual image of XP Pro that I created in VMware. I put it on a Corsair Flash Voyager USB key, with some coaching from the MokaFive tech support people. Like I said, loading up your virtual software images can be tricky.

Thereafter, I had my portable virtual machine that I could carry with me, without having to use any other software, and without having to worry about the state of the guest machine that I was using at the airport lounge or hotel business center. I also included my personal software favorites: A copy of PGP encryption software, my Instant Messaging and Skype VOIP software, image editing, podcasting tools, and other things that I normally have on my laptop and don’t want to download on the fly. Once loaded onto the guest machine, everything was set up the way I would use it normally! If you want, you could choose to load up a word processor, or, just about anything else that installs locally.

To help you get started, the company has put together a collection of “Live PCs” – these are complete environments or applications that will run with MokaFive’s stripped down operating system called Player that runs the virtual sessions (for virtualization fiends, this is known as a hypervisor).

MokaFive has provided various Live PC disk images as suggestions. One is called “Fearless Browser.” It is so named because it offers a protected browsing environment inside the virtual machine: Once you are done with your session, you close it and if you did catch any infections, they are eliminated. It also happens to include Mozilla’s Thunderbird e-mail client.

Another Live PC is for Ubuntu (a Linux variant), and there’s even a Live PC that brings up MS DOS (I guess some people get nostalgic for that environment). I used all of these Live PCs in my tests. Once you have the Player software on your external drive, you pick which Live PC image you want to run, and thereafter it automatically updates itself across the Internet if the MokaFive folks have made any improvements.