does this exist ?

[baladesinsolites57]

very small Pc unit ( credit card size ) with no machine server embedded , can be connected by USB or wifi to any no machine client , enough power and ram to browse the internet and doing word processing . I was thinking of the HTC shift but smaller , slimer , faster and without screen . This would not be a terminal but rather something you can carry in your pocket and use with other machines . ( a bit like a slax usb key but without the need to reboot the machine , selecting usb boot , etc ... )

[c9311]

You can get a Yoggie Gatekeeper which is a mini USB computer that runs Linux, but it is a security application and can not be booted.

[cybrax]

I know some computers do boot up with a glacial slowness at present but give it a couple of years or Google for UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) if you simply cannot wait. Carrying all your documents, applications AND Operating system on a USB 'stick' is going to be a practical prospect when this becomes mainstream.

Allowing anybody to just plug in a stick and run exectuables on a shared PC is a plauge waiting to happen. Even though your hypothetical PC base station system would have no hard drive of its own, it would almost certainly have plenty of RAM to hide a couple of kilobytes of malware code.

[baladesinsolites57]

You can get a Yoggie Gatekeeper which is a mini USB computer that runs Linux, but it is a security application and can not be booted.

I was not aware of this company ( or rather ex-company unforutunatly ) . This is interesting because I had been working on similar topics , e.g a hardware system that can "outsource" the O.S security-related tasks . Unfortunatly this is rather hard to build ... especially because you need to deal with norms , firms , etc ... . Anyway , looking at their web site , it seems that they weren't luckier than me trying to raise some funds ..

However this problematic of building a hardware system/chip that can process security tasks ( a bit like a video card process video tasks ) is linked to some min -portative usb devices provided with their own operating system . I guess they would have somehow to "register" to this security hardware system ... then they would be allowed to use the host machine resources ... Then you carry your pc in your pocket and you plug it to whatever machine you like with huge screen , big keyboard , etc ...

this vision is not too futuristic , maybe for the year 2011 ?