Since September of last year I’ve been curious about this MojoPac thing. Missed all the buzz? From the Overview:
MojoPac is a technology that transforms your iPod or USB Hard Drive or Flash drive into a portable and private PC. Just install MojoPac on any USB 2.0 complaint storage device, upload your applications and files, modify your user settings and environment preferences, and take it with you everywhere.
Every time you plug your MojoPac-enabled device into any Windows XP PC , MojoPac automatically launches your environment on the host PC. Your communications, music, games, applications, and files are all local and accessible. And when you unplug the MojoPac device, no trace is left behind – your information is not cached on the host PC.
That’s always sounded so cool. I immediately think about having my own little web development environment on a stick. All my editors and tools with me, ready to go at a moments notice — and without having to install that stuff on someone else’s PC or a (gads!) a work PC.
Alas, until recently I couldn’t give it a try as my test machine had a “non-standard windows location.” In other words, it wasn’t installed on the C: drive. That’s (finally) been fixed this year though. Time to play!
Play Time
Sunday morning I grabbed the free 30 day trial and installed it onto a 1GB USB stick. Now, I’ll be the first to admit this stick came very cheap and probably is about as slow as a USB2 stick can be. Which would explain why the MojoPac experience on it is… well… let’s go with “tolerable” to describe it. Not fast. Maybe borderline too slow. (and yes, I optimized it).
I think the biggest annoyance is web browsing. Go to a page, start to scroll down and everything locks up for 30 seconds or so as the USB stick flashes like crazy. That gets old quick. A smarter man would probably remember to disable browser caching next time (/blush).
Performance issue aside, you really do get your own private session with this. It uses the host PC’s network connects (and, as it turns out, software firewall) but doesn’t seem to leave any traces. Sluggish yet slick.
Tonight I tried it on a 55GB 2.5″ hard-drive based USB2 drive. Way better! With that drive all my initial concerns were gone. I quickly and easily set up a nice little development environment for myself and had a lot of fun exploring and playing. Performance was great.
Of course, that particular drive isn’t nearly as portable as a little USB stick. Not that it is huge, but it doesn’t quite fit in a pocket.
Conclusion
Here’s the deal-killer though. This thing, once the trial ends, is $50. For me, and how I’d use it, that’s just too much. There’s a referral thing going on right now that’ll get $10 knocked off, but again… too much. Unless there’s a sale in the $20 range I guess I’ll be sticking with my current USB apps for now. I intend to keep experimenting through the trial, I wonder if I’ll change my mind?
You know where this product would be really cool? Small business. Setup a bunch of non-personalized XP machines at the office. Give all employees a portable USB hard drive with MojoPac installed. Any computer, anywhere, can become their workstation. Meeting and conference room PCs will no longer become bastard offspring. Want to work from home? As long as they have an XP based PC laying around, the workstation is there too. That would be interesting to try.
Have you tried MojoPac? What did you think? Am I missing the boat?
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March 12th, 2007 
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Haven’t tried Mojo, I’m pretty happy with PortableApps you’ve mentioned before. The latter seems to cover all the important points, and for what it doesn’t – XAMPP would run any PHP application locally
you have to be logged in as an admin to use mojopac so i can’t use it at school or work.
a) you have to run windows
b) you have to be admin
c) profit??
i think not. i tried mojopac and it was cool and all, but i cant get past the fact that if i have the first two, i probably dont need mojopac. i’d rather boot PuppyOS and run everything in a fully portable, non-OS-specific environment, all from a USB stick
Paul & NoJo- very good points about the need to have admin rights. For some reason, I hadn’t caught that wrinkle when I read the Host PC Requirements. (yes, I must be blind!).
That kind of kills the internet cafe aspect, doesn’t it?
My main hangup is still the price. This could be handy in my world, but not $50 worth of handy.
Tony – I suspect I’ll be staying with my current “portable” type setup as well.
Reminds me, I *really* need to update my Toolkit page.
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