Turning Another Computer Into Your Own
Software Carries Settings,
Applications on USB Device;
Some Parts for Geeks Only
Most of us know the frustrations associated with using someone else's computer -- whether while traveling for business without your own laptop, pausing in the computer lab at school or just fiddling around on our sister's PC during a visit. Using someone else's computer offers a temporary solution, but you'll most likely find yourself hunting around the foreign PC for your favorite programs, grumbling under your breath about why a newer version of Microsoft Word isn't installed and wondering why a 35-year-old still has teddy bears on her desktop background.
What if you could use another person's computer with the settings, applications and data from your own PC? You would have your files and could use your applications to open and work on those files, along with the convenience of your personalized settings, favorites and desktop designs.
This week, we tested a new product from RingCube Technologies Inc. called MojoPac. This software program gives you a way to pack up your computer's digital "mojo" and take it with you on any USB storage device, including a small thumb drive or even an iPod. You use the hardware, operating system and Internet connection of the host computer, but run everything else from your USB device.
A view of the computer screen before MojoPac takes over your host computer.
A few other products, including one called Migo, offer similar functionality. But, unlike Migo, MojoPac lets you carry around your own programs, not just data files.
MojoPac sounded too good to be true, but for the most part, it actually worked as promised. Privacy is a big plus for MojoPac, as your files remain on your thumb drive or iPod, and never transfer to the host PC's hard disk. Similarly, your entire browsing history and all cookies remain on the portable device.
There is a catch, however: A few aspects of this program are a little too geeky for the average person, it is slow to perform some tasks, and it crashed one of our computers during a test. Also, it doesn't support making Microsoft Office portable, unless you have a corporate or institutional license.
But the company claims it is hoping to make the geekier parts of MojoPac more user-friendly in its next software update, and is working on allowing average consumers to carry their copies of Office with them. MojoPac only works with Windows XP programs as of now.
Another limitation: the storage space available on a portable device. A small thumb drive is unlikely to hold many programs, or a lot of space-hogging data. A large-capacity iPod would be roomy, unless it is crammed with music and videos.
MojoPac can be downloaded from
www.MojoPac.com using a free 30-day trial period. Before Nov. 16, MojoPac costs $30 with up to three additional licenses for $15 each; after this introductory period, the cost goes up to $50 and each of the three additional licenses is $25.
We tested MojoPac first by using one of the most common USB storage devices available: an Apple iPod, specifically the two-gigabyte nano. Your iPod must be formatted for manual use, which is easy enough to do in iTunes. The idea is to use the leftover space on any iPod, the part not occupied by music and other media, to store your portable programs and files.
But RingCube also suggests that you optimize, or speed up, the iPod for use with MojoPac. Though this adjustment only needs to be done one time, it's a five-step process of digging through menus on your PC that most normal people would be too intimidated to open. We couldn't even find our iPod listed to optimize it in one test.
After entering some data about ourselves on the MojoPac Web site, we downloaded a copy of MojoPac, making sure to save it onto our iPod rather than the computer's hard drive.
A Data Copy feature walked us through a straightforward process of deciding what we could copy over to the MojoPac device; we simply check-marked files that we wanted to copy. The transferable data included browser settings for Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, as well as common files and folders for My Pictures, My Music and My Videos. Files and folders that weren't listed by default could also be transferred.
As we checked off the files that we wanted to copy to our MojoPac device, a small pie chart showed how much space was taken or still available for storage. Even without music, our iPod filled up fast, preventing it from holding our large My Music folder.
When we tried this with a two-gigabyte USB thumb drive, we also had to ditch any thoughts of carrying our music. But we were surprised when the program warned us that the 1.2 gigabytes of programs and files we planned to copy was a "HUGE" amount of data and could take a long time to transfer. Indeed, the copying process took 12 minutes.
Things were speedier on the iPod, which had been stripped of its normal music files for this test. In just five minutes, we copied just under two gigabytes of data onto our iPod nano. We entered our username and password for MojoPac and in a few seconds, the whole screen was taken over by a new desktop with the MojoPac "M" label. A special toolbar at the top of the screen read "Switch to Host"; when selected, we suddenly flashed back to our old desktop where the toolbar read "Switch to Mojo."
The MojoPac view is meant to look and feel like a different computer from the normal look of the borrowed machine, and it does. Instead of the machine's usual stuff, it held our own familiar data, including the My Pictures folder and Internet Explorer settings. And you can add new stuff to it without affecting the underlying computer. While in MojoPac view, we downloaded and installed the Firefox browser.
When you exit MojoPac and remove the thumb drive or iPod on which it resides, the borrowed computer returns to normal, without any of your own programs or files.
But there were a few downsides to MojoPac. Because space can be a problem if you have a lower-capacity USB drive, it would be helpful if the program offered a quick-glance view to show how much space you've used and how much remains.
Another issue sprouts up whenever you plug an iPod into a PC with iTunes installed because iTunes will automatically open. Therefore, to start MojoPac, you must dig into your My Computer folder, open the drive and open the MojoPac file. An automatic work-around would be much easier for most users.
At one point during testing, MojoPac crashed our computer. While it rebooted without a problem, this isn't a good thing. In another instance, on a different host computer, MojoPac refused to quit. After 15 minutes of waiting for it to exit, we physically removed the thumb drive on which it was loaded. But that corrupted some files and made it work poorly thereafter.
Also, we found it annoying that the company bundled a program we didn't want, a messaging application for gamers, placing it on our iPod.
If you have any security programs like Zone Alarm installed on your host PC to warn you whenever a program wants to go online, you'll get pop-up warnings from the host, even when you are in MojoPac's environment.
The core of this product is smart and quite useful, but it needs some work to be as simple and reliable as it should be.
MojoPac让你的电脑与你如影随形
我们大多数人都曾有过使用他人电脑的经历──无论是你出差在外没有携带笔记本、或在学校计算机房作短暂停留或在探望姐姐的时候用她的电脑消磨时光，这种经历中的不适及失落不言而喻。使用别人的电脑是暂时的解决方法，但是你极有可能发现自己要么在一台陌生的电脑上四处搜寻最喜爱的程序，要么低声抱怨电脑上为什么还没有安装微软(Microsoft) Word的最新版本，要么就是在琢磨35岁的姐姐为什么还要用泰迪熊作桌面背景。
如果你使用别人的电脑时，上面有你的电脑的设置、应用软件及数据文件，那该多好：在熟悉的个人设置、偏好以及桌面设计等舒 的环境下，你有自己的文件夹，可以用你的应用程序打开这些文件并进行工作。
本周，我们对RingCube Technologies Inc.的新产品MojoPac进行了测试。这个软件能使你将电脑中的数码“灵魂”(mojo)打包并储存在U盘或iPod等USB存储设备中以便随身携带。有了它，你只使用他人电脑上的硬件、操作系统以及互联网连接，其他的东西全部来自你的USB存储设备。
RingCube还有一些其他产品提供类似的功能，比如Migo。但是，与Migo不同的是，MojoPac使你不光能携带数据，还能带上程序。
MojoPac听上去完美得无可挑剔，不过它确实能够实现所承诺的大部分功能。保护隐私是MojoPac的一大优点，因为你的文件只会留在U盘或iPod中，绝对不会转移到主机的硬盘上。同样的，你的全部浏览纪录以及cookies都会存在USB存储设备上。
不过它还是有缺陷的：这个程序的某些部分对于普通用户来说有点过于古怪，它在执行某些任务时运行速度很慢，在一次测试中它还使一台电脑崩溃。此外，如果你没有公司或机构的使用许可，你无法携带微软Office软件。
RingCube表示，它希望在下一次软件更新的时候让那些古怪的部分变得更加友好，并且他们正在努力解决个人客户复制Office软件的问题。目前MojoPac只能在Windows XP下运行。
MojoPac的另一个问题是它受限于便携式存储设备的空间。一个小U盘不可能装下所有的程序或者占据大量空间的数据。如果一个大容量的iPod没有装满音乐及视频的话，它的空间倒是足够。
RingCube现在提供MojoPac的30天免费测试版本，可以从
www.MojoPac.com上下载。在11月16日前，MojoPac的价格是30美元，三个额外许可每个售价15美元；在这个推广期之后，其价格将上升至50美元，额外许可每个25美元。
我们先用最常见的USB存储设备、容量为2G的苹果(Apple) iPod nano对MojoPac进行了测试。iPod必须被格式化成支持手动操作，这在iTunes下就可以轻松操作完成。这样作是为了在iPod的剩余空间上（没有被音乐及其他媒体软件占据的空间）储存程序及文件。
但是RingCube还建议将iPod进行优化或提高其运行速度以配合MojoPac的使用。尽管这种调整只需作一次，但它需要通过个人电脑的重重菜单进行五个步骤的操作，大多数普通电脑用户因担心出问题绝对不会打开这些菜单的。在一次测试中，我们甚至没能在菜单中找到需要优化的iPod。
在MojoPac网站输入了我们的一些个人资料之后，我们下载了MojoPac，并且确保它存在iPod上而不是电脑的硬盘上。
通过“数据复制”(Data Copy)功能，我们可以决定需要复制到存储设备上的内容，整个过程直接明了；我们将那些需要复制的文件作上标记就可以了。可传输的数据包括微软IE浏览器及Mozilla Firefox的设置，还有“我的图片”、“我的音乐”以及“我的视频”等共享文件及文件夹。默认状态没有列出的文件及文件夹同样可以被传输。
当我们核对并确定需要复制的文件时，屏幕上出现了一个饼形图表，上面显示了已用空间和可用空间的大小。尽管iPod里面没有音乐，但它很快就装满了，我们无法将“我的音乐”文件夹存上去。
当我们用一个2G的USB U盘进行测试的时候，我们同样不得不舍弃存储音乐的想法。不过，尽管这个程序警告说我们要复制的1.2G的程序及文件“很大”，需要一定时间进行传输，但令我们惊讶的是，复制过程实际上仅花了12分钟。
这个过程在没有任何音乐文件的iPod上更快。在短短5分钟之内，我们将近2G的数据全部复制到iPod nano上。输入MojoPac用户名及密码之后，一个带着“M”（MojoPac的商业标识）的新桌面在数秒钟内呈现在电脑屏幕上。在屏幕顶端有一个特殊工具栏，上面写着“返回主机页面”(Switch to Host)；点击这个工具栏，我们迅速切换到了原来的桌面，这次工具栏上写着“转至Mojo”(Switch to Mojo)。
MojoPac界面是为了使借来的电脑看上去及感觉上有所不同，它确实做到了这一点。MojoPac界面上都是我们自己熟悉的内容，比如“我的图片”文件夹以及IE设置等，而不是这台机器上原来的那些东西。你还可以在毫不影响主机的情况下增加任何新东西。在MojoPac界面下，我们下载并安装了Firefox浏览器。
退出MojoPac界面，把U盘或iPod从主机上卸下之后，电脑会恢复正常，里面不会留下你的任何程序或文件。
但是，MojoPac有几点不足之处。如果你使用容量较小的USB存储设备，存储空间就是个问题。如果MojoPac能够事先显示可用空间的快速浏览界面，对用户来说就非常有帮助。
再就是，如果把安装了iTunes的iPod插入个人电脑之后，需要手动启动MojoPac，因为iTunes会自动打开。要启动MojoPac，你必须进入“我的电脑”，打开iPod，然后再打开MojoPac文件。如果MojoPac有自动开启功能对大多数用户来说就比较方便了。
在我们进行测试的过程中，MojoPac使一台电脑崩溃。尽管重新启动后没有发生任何问题，但这也不是什么好事。还有一次，MojoPac在另一台电脑上拒绝退出。等待了15分钟后，我们直接把U盘从主机上拔了下来。但是这种做法破坏了MojoPac的几个文件，之后它的运行表现都很差。
另外，该公司在MojoPac上捆绑的一个程序让我们感到很恼火，这个游戏玩家申请程序被存入了我们的iPod中，而我们根本不想要它。
如果你使用的主机上安装了Zone Alarm之类的安全软件，每当有程序要连接互联网时，就会有一个窗口弹出发出警告，即使在MojoPac环境下也是如此。
总之，这个产品的核心概念很巧妙，而且非常实用，但它还需要做些改进使其达到应有的便捷性和可靠性。
Walter S. Mossberg / Katherine Boehret
