SL on the go with Mojo!

Staring me in the face and I didn’t know about it! Well maybe it's because I never really had a practical use for it since I was always home



I'm looking into buying a portable hard drive and was wondering if anyone else has had any experience with MOJOPAC, what works best for SL, it doesn't have to be compact or cheap, quality and speed are my main concerns, any input would be greatly appreciated.



For those of you who wonder to what I refer to, that haven't bothered to goggle it yet this handy little tool allows you to access many of your programs via a USB 2.0 compliant device such as a Jump drive or External Hard drive including Photoshop & SL on ANY PC! I was bummed when I had to start spending time on the road, this ray of light has me in a euphoric state, I can access the SL platform, programs and even my internet browser without leaving a single trace on the pc I'm using!(Or so it claims)

Very Kewl or what?!?

It's an interesting idea, and I've never heard of it before. My main concern would be finding computers capable of running SL, however. Also, the SL client is pretty damn small compared to other online games, and downloading it is much faster than any client (or even patch) downloads on any online game I've played.

The nice thing about that Mojo thing I guess is the ability to easily remove everything once you're done.

Over the holidays a friend of mine installed SL on the computer of a friend where she was staying for a couple of days. She forgot to uninstall SL before leaving AND she had left the 'remember password' feature on. Someone at her friend's house (we don't know who) got curious, logged into her account, and did some odd but thankfully non-destructive things. (I NEVER leave 'remember password' checked, by the way!)

I have SL running on a portable mini hard drive using Mojopac. It is kinda like an XP Virtual machine, but it isn't a proper VM as it still uses parts of the XP OS to run. It does, however, give you an XP environment that is separate from the machine your are on. You can install and run SL and whatnot as if you were on a standalone workstation.

The way it works is, after you install Mojopac, you plug in the USB drive, run the start.exe program on the USB drive, and it starts the Mojopac pseudo-VM. You log in and it is as if you are running an a separate computer. There is an icon on the system tray and a hidable toolbar at the top to switch between the host computer and the Mojopac session.

Granted, if you are using it on a slow computer, it will run slow, but if you want to keep your stuff completely separate from the computer you are using, then it will be a good thing.

As a tangent from this thread - No one should ever leave their "remember password" checked. I have played a couple different games where Hackers have used the fact you have "remember password" checked to obtain access to the account.

They have since removed the ability.

Since SL doesnt use a username thats secret it seems to me its even more dangerous than those other games.

Thanks for the advice Colette/Wildfire it's imporant to remember what may seem insignificant at the moment, leaving a password behind is never a good idea.

danica Cullen: In Regards to the Mojo what brand and how much memory are in the portable HD you use and do you know of any that perform a better task of running SL and lets say photoshop at the same time? I've never heard the term Virtual Machine though, I'll google it tonight when I have a little more time.

Thanks for the propmt replies everyone, if any other SL members would care to share their insight on Mojopac again it is highly appreciated

I've been using MojoPac for a while with SecondLife installed to it. I have it on 2 devices, a 2Gb USB2 memory stick and a 40Gb USB2 portable drive. It works fine on both, leaving no files on the host PC. As the 40Gb device is a hard drive it may be faster running from that, I can't really say that I've noticed much difference though.

I can't use it at work as the proxy server doesn't have the ports open that SL requires, and I suspect I would find it difficult to justify a request to open them

What I haven't tried, but would be interested to know, is if an Internet cafe would allow it's use, and if indeed it would work.

Nick

I have left work early to visit the nearest Starbucks for an SL event before and it worked great. Of course at Starbucks you have to pay to use their wireless, so it's possible they're more liberal in the access they give you.

But honestly, I've never been to a hotspot in the wild that didn't let me connect to SL (have used a couple hotel lobbies), and the performance has generally been good as well.

ahhh .. you missed my point there Wildefire. Yes I could walk into a wireless hotspot and use my laptop to access SL, but I don't always have my laptop. I do carry a memory stick on my keyring however.

This thread is about MojoPac which lets you effectively carry your own XP installation on a memory stick and run it on a host XP computer by plugging it in to a USB port.

What I haven't done is tried that in an internet cafe using their computers. Do they let one use a USB memory stick? Are they tied down to what software they can run? Are their ports restricted preventing Secondlife from working?

I couldn't say for sure as never been to one but they'd be crazy not to let you use USB for data storage these days .. who carries floppy disks any more?

Very interested in following this thread!

I'm not sure I understand, if the PC does not meet the minimum requirements in order to run SL effectively, one has to make sure that it does before attempting to use mojo on that pc right, in other words if I am using a pc with the bare minimum it is likely that SL won't run at all, or will it run at a crawl
does the mojo instruct the external HD and the OS to SHARE the load of running SL?)

Is their any one external HD that works better than another (I'm sure their is), has anyone conducted a comparison?

I plan on purchasing the seagate 320GB external HD 7200RPM 16MB, what benefits are their with this particular drive vs a simpler (and way cheaper) jump drive, what would the difference in price reflect?

Thanks again to all who have replied, I ask that you pardon my iggnorance on the subject as I am slowly learning, again if their are any more of you out there that can contribute your experience on this topic, your input is greatly appreciated.



-Kep

There is a brief knowledgebase article on Mojopac, at http://secondlife.com/knowledgebase/article.php?id=299

Thanks Suze, thats actually where I got it from.

Have you had any experience with it?

I have not had any experience with it.

The knowledgebase article shows Pathfinder Linden as the author. I believe Pathfinder is touting this system to some of the educators he works with. Folks using SL for business, education, etc. that want to give presentations have a need for such a thing - I'm sure there's some Lindens that use it.

If I was in the market and looking for someone that experience with it and SL I'd start by dropping an email to [email]pathfinder@lindenlab.com[/email] .

There's a link to the educators mailing list with a comment about the Mojo, at https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/educators/2006-October.txt . Possibly you could get on the educator mailing list and post a question there.

Also, if I were looking for Mojo-SL info, I'd ask the #secondlife IRC channel on Efnet, and post a questions in the forums at sluniverse.com, secondcitizen.com, sl.stratics.com, and sl-forums.com.

According to the website, you can only use Mojopac if you have administrator privileges on the host computer. This would probably mean you can't use it at most internet cafes. Could someone who is using Mojo for SL please confirm this?

Those are some wonderful suggestions Suze, thank you for them, I have accounts with many of the the sites you referenced and I shot an email over to Path, I will continue to monitor this thread however to avoid mental overload and in order to share the information obtained with the rest of the community (I'm also a fan of the SL.com forums) , if I cannot get results here I will then try those sites that you mentioned. Thanks to all that have contributed thus far..... Here's to a better understanding, Cheers!



-Kep

I see this is quite old, but it's still a question that I would love to see the answer to.
BT