Goodbye U3, hello StartKey: Windows in your pocket
Many a mobile warrior is familiar with U3 and applications on a USB stick. These portable apps are geared to work right from a USB flash drive that you carry around: just plug the drive into a PC and away you go. Mary Jo Foley reports that Microsoft is nearly ready to announce their U3 replacement and it’s called StartKey.The concept is similar to the original U3 approach, but with a Microsoft-twist. StartKey will have a Windows look and feel and will bring much of your Windows environment with you: your desktop wallpaper, icons, contacts and more. You can do much of the same (more, in fact) with MojoPac for free as it brings your entire Windows environment with you on a USB device. Using MojoPac, you essentially run a virtual Windows environment on a host PC. Should be interesting to see how StartKey differs.
I preferred the U3 system to Mojopac, but it fell foul of Vista. When I plugged my trusty U3 stick into a Vista machine – nothing. I should have known.
After much hunting around, I found a make of U3 stick that would work with Vista and bought it. It came with a warning that some of the applications I might choose to load onto it might not work with Vista! At this point I began to think it was perhaps not a gadget to depend on.
I suppose the Microsoft version ought to be guaranteed to work with all forms of Windows, but I wouldn’t bank on it.
It would be good to see what security features are included. AFAIK, U3 allows you to encrypt the whole drive. MS doesn’t have a great track record with security products so this will be something to watch.
I’ve been using Ceedo and its companion software Argo for the last several months, which creates a virtual Windows environment (registry, etc) so that you can run your favorite software directly from a thumb drive. This is great, because the government frowns on installing software on their computers, but having eReader around during lunch breaks is so nice.
It will be interesting to see if StartKey will match that level of sophistication.
Personally, I don’t have any use for U3 due to the fact that every single application has to be specially packaged in order to run. Also, there is no support for MS Office at all.
MojoPack doesn’t run in Vista and it requires admin privileges on the host in order to run. You can install an additional application called “Usher” on the host to address this issue, but Usher needs admin privileges in order to install. Because MojoPac cannot be run in a non-admin account pretty much makes it useless for every day use, and brings it down to the level of being a pretty sophisticated “sandbox” for use on your own PC.
Ceedo, on the other hand, runs in Windows 2000, XP and Vista and requires no admin privileges to run. You can also install a huge amount of Windows-based applications in Ceedo without having to modify the installers in any way, shape or form.
Ceedo also has a decent applications repository, much like U3’s repository.
Sure, you do have to install Argo, Ceedo’s application installer, in order to install your own software (software not in their applications repository), but both Ceedo and Argo are included in the same license now, and the price for both has been dropped to $39.00.
I’d have to say that right now, Ceedo is the best portable application virtualization solution available. We’ll all have to sit back, wait, and see if the Microsoft offering will be anything worth while. Don’t hold your breath while you’re waiting for Microsoft to release their solution, though. MS don’t have a good record when it comes to schedules, so it may be a loooong time before we get to see their offering.