MojoPac video illustrates the mobile environment concept

I know that we've covered MojoPac in the past, but as they say, 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. In this case, it's more like 'a YouTube video is worth three blog posts', so here's a five-minute video demonstration of MojoPac from DemoFall 2006. The video is actually amusing at times, but more importantly it underscores the advantages of carrying your computing environment on a portable storage device. The idea behind MojoPac is that you take your environment, which includes all of you data, preferences and applications, for use on any other Windows XP computer. Have a look-see of the video to get a better idea of what it's all about, or download a free 30-day trial. If you decide that you need your Mojo, a license will cost you $49.95.

Comments

[Art Ksvanagh]

I haven't watched the video because I'm viewing this on a Nokia N800 (hi, Mike) which is notoriously bad at playing YouTube. However, it so happens that I tried out Mojopac last week, knowing that I was going to be away this week and not wishing to carry my notebook around.

On a 2GB Kingston SD card it is glacially slow, to the point of being completely unusable. I didn't manage to evaluate if fully because, as soon as I tried it on a computer other than the one I had used to install it, I got a message saying it needed to be activated again. Of course, it wouldn't let me activate it again as a free trial. I managed about seven boots in total before my free trial expired and failed to launch a single app. In fact, I got just one app installed.

It sounds like a very clever idea but is of no practical use unless (I suppose) you have a very fast USB drive. I wasn't impressed.

[Kevin C. Tofel]

Art, although the MojoPac site recommends 2GB or more of storage on the USB device, which is what you had, I suspect it would run much better on a device with much more storage capacity. I suspect that it's running on an 80 GB iPod in the video. It could have been the speed of your SD card, but I wonder if capacity had anything to do with the poor experience as well?

[mojo_pacman]

i wouldn't recommend installing mojopac on a sd card unless it's 150x speed. a kingston usb flash drive would deliver better performance. i think this product is so cool i just wish it could override admin controls at my job or at school although i understand why they would not let us do that. lately they've been getting so strict on re-activation that it would be a turn off to a trial user. shiet its a turn off to me and i have 3 licenses.

[Gene Schmeling]

I just watched the video. A picture is worth about 10 blogs in my case! I certainly didn't understand the software until I watched the video.

It does seem like a too-good-to-be-true concept. They say that you can use it with PC games, too, which is probably promising too much. But, if you have a fast enough device containing enough hard drive space, and it does actually work, this concept is VERY exciting, if, for nothing else, it's backup capability.

[Art Ksvanagh]

Thanks for that insight, Kevin. I'd assumed, without particularly thinking about it, that even a relatively small capacity memory card would be faster than a hard disk but I can see that that wasn't necessarily a sensible assumption to make.

As it turned out, I did manage to leave my notebook at home -- however, I did so by relying on the lo-tech solution of finishing the job before I left.

[Jelpy]

hi,

do you have a direct (text) link to the video page? I have problems with QT (I view all embedded QT as a white rectangle with the QT logo and a question mark superimposed on it).

Thanks.

[Jelpy]

This is how I view this page on my PC:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59572874@N00/510926253/

[Kevin C. Tofel]

Looks like an issue with the QuickTime plugin for Internet Explorer since you mention on Flickr that you can play locally stored videos....

[Jelpy]

Hi Kevin,

That must be it. However I would appreciate a direct text link to the video or page where the video is shown. Thanks.

[Kevin C. Tofel]

Jelpy, the only direct link I have is to the YouTube video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n30wrguIyS8 I don't see the video available in any non-Flash formats.