Well, when I stole, I mean borrowed, when I say night, I mean afternoon, when I say DJ I mean colleague, and when I say life, I mean ability to interact with my digital world; by which I mean laptop. Without my customisations, configurations etc, I was without:
- passwords (no big deal, but a bit annoying)
FF toolbar folder (very frustrating - my favourite web ‘apps’ on there!)
all those Windows tweaks you just do (took some fiddling!)
No Windows favourites (slightly annoying)
No customised keyboard shortcuts for Office (grr)
And so on. Although it is probably possible to reconfigure the way Windows logs us on so all this stuff is stored on the server, this would almost certainly drive our server requirements up quite significantly and potentially be quite inconvenient for remote use. Not sure.
But the point I wanted to make (I’m a fan of the thin client world) was that if I could just log on to Firefox remotely when I fired it up, half my customisations would be in place, which would be great. Although I appreciate it’s a massive security risk. And if I could save my Windows preferences somewhere and temporarily apply them to a system that I have to use on occasion, that would also rock. Although, again, probably a security risk.
All the good things are security risks. The world would be better without malicious hackers, criminal masterminds and Noel Edmonds (I’m just kidding, I used to love his show).
What are the top 5 things you miss when you have to use someone else’s PC? Chris? Tom?
i was actually thinking a few days ago that there must be a market for some sort of application that burns all your PC/laptop settings (including FF tool bar, passwords, cookies, word templates etc) onto an executable disc so when you need to break a new computer there’s far less hassle…
Ed
Better yet… have them on a NFC subcutaneous chip implant, which could dynamically update, and use that for authentication too (NFC+ thumbprint scanner - which will finally have a use!).
Right, need to go file a patent…