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Get yer Mojo on…

Mojopack

MojoPac. Hmm…OK, quite simply one of the most brilliant bits of software I’ve seen for a long time. Download and install onto any USB flash drive, (or portable device like an iPod or Smartphone) and suddenly you can carry around your whole computing environment wherever you are. All you need is a Windows XP machine in front of you with a free USB port and you’re good to go. Remember Migo? It’s what Migo should have been. And let’s not talk about U3, eh? Read on for my mini review… [Update: OK, I’ve got a bunch of invites now, just email me or comment here.]

What makes MojoPac special? The fact that you can install applications to it without thinking (from CD or Internet). The fact that it perfectly mimics your conventional Windows environment while operating *completely independently* from the host machine. No danger of accessing the hard disk from the USB drive, because you can’t. Perfect for Internet Cafes and doing stuff on your mate’s computer. You can even load it up with games and start playing online or offline all from the USB drive. Privacy (password protected, encryption compatible), portability (playing Half-Life 2 on your office computer during lunch?), security (testing out a potentially dodgy piece of spyware/software? Just load it onto the MojoPac device). The list goes on. And you can’t compare it to small Linux distros, because the fact is you still can’t reliably use a lot of mainstream software or games yet on Linux, more’s the pity.

Mojopacscreen

Installation is a snap. You need to register for an account (maybe some secret server sauce involved?) and download the application to your USB device. Set up is via a simple wizard, and once all the registration formalities are complete, you’re ready to go. The MojoPac desktop looks exactly like a Windows one (click thumbnail above for example), except that the wallpaper is black. You have every single Windows environment feature available and it works identically to your normal desktop. You can switch between the Mojo and host desktop at the click of a button, and move files, folders and media back and forward via Windows Explorer. There’s lots of nice touches, like a pop up system which lets you know if any pop ups are happening on your host desktop while you’re working in MojoPac (useful if you’ve got a firewall installed which locks out application access to the Internet until released).

The key to the whole thing, though, is the fact that it is so simple to do whatever you want. No worrying about compromising your host desktop, just install what you like and configure the USB device to act as you want it to. Your host machine remains untouched, you leave no trace of any applications or settings on the host when you unplug. Nothing at all. Glorious.

Currently the beta is free of charge, and as yet the company hasn’t given any pricing details. However as long as it’s realistic, this thing is going to fly off the shelves, believe me. I’ve been testing it on a tatty little 128MB flash drive on a slow poke USB 1.0 port and it’s great. It makes me want to run out and buy the largest capacity pocket USB drive I can lay my hands on, and set up a full clone of my laptop immediately. Ah bliss, no more lugging heavy plastic round airports. Oh and there may be Mac and Linux versions in the pipeline. Register, download and play with this NOW!

 With MojoPac you can carry the contents of an entire PC on any portable storage device (iPod, USB Flash/Hard Drive, cell phone, etc.), and connect to any PC worldwide to access and work with the contents, regardless of what applications are installed on that PC. MojoPac supports all applications, including iTunes, PC games like World of Warcraft, and work applications including Microsoft Office. Using MojoPac, your iPod not only works as your iPod, but also as your personal computer!

37 Comments

  • Oh. My. God. This looks DEVINE! And I was thinking about getting an external USB hard drive! Easily the coolest thing I’ve seen on RedFerret, like, EVER!

    One question though. What happens when Vista comes out? (like any geek’s planning on upgrading any time soon, but still)

    C.

  • Oh crap, and my comment posted twice. Do us a favor Red, and delete it so I don’t look like such a fool?

  • Done Charlotte. And it’s a house rule on the Ferret that no-one is ever made to look like a fool. :-)

  • This don’t looks devine, this looks Linux.

  • Yeah, it looks linux, but do someone please call me once Linux can run Outlook, Access (I’m a geek, but not geeky enough to be running mySQL), Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro, Sims2, and be an OS which is useable by anyone without a computing degree…

    Just sayin!

    ;-)

    C.

  • Good day� please pra wanted to seber as fasso to acquire the obliged program MojoPac??

  • Red,

    I gotta try this out. Looks very similar to Indi but they have been in closed beta forevvvver

    How about an invite?

  • Ideal: never-no-more having slow synch-applications sort out my data-changes on ext-HD and be uncertain if time on both pc’s was/is the same… or badly timed ftp-servers; who needs’m.
    I need this, gimme gimme!

    Although ofcourse (if it really leaves no traces) this means that every secure network-administrator will never let any user be able to plug anything (…) in anymore.

  • I’d really like to try this. How do I get an “invite”?
    Thanks.

  • Have been reading the Red Ferret Journal for a long time, love your web site,
    I’m not trying to sweet talk you but, How do I get an “invite”?
    to mojo, this would be cool.
    sincerely, Paul

  • Hey, all you need to do to get an invite is to email them on the address that they list on their site. It’s some silly email like, “[email protected]” or something.

    Charlotte

  • Tried that , they wanted to know where I heard about it, still not got an invite. Has anyone here got one I can have? pls.
    Andy.

  • Forget that I have one. Thanks.

  • Fabulous! Could you send me an invite to this? I emailed them with no luck. By the way, here is a video demo of MojoPac in action: http://www.everythingusb.com/mojopac.html

  • Still got invites left if you need one… :-)

    Matt thanks for the video too. The more I see this product in action the more I’m convinced it’s a HUGE technology in every way.

  • And see, now I’m going to be broke for the rest of the month, cause I went out and bought myself TWO (2!) hard drives and enclosures, JUST for Mojo – one for me, and one for work. RedFerret costs too much money…

  • Heh, hey no fair Charlotte. I’m just the bearer of glad tidings. Don’t shoot the messenger. :-)

  • hey Read, invite me! Tkz

  • Do you still have an invite? Got to have this Mojo. Thanks Red.
    Good looking stuff.

  • Fantastic, if it works as well as you say! My wife work requires her checking out various web sites, and I’ve had to do major anti-spyware surgery on her system a couple of times now; I’d love to have a disposable environment for her that didn’t eat the system up like a full vmware. Please send along an invite if you have any left!

  • Hey Red can you send me an invite? Thanks If anyone else has one let me know!

  • Hey Red can you send me an invite? Thanks If anyone else has one let me know! (I am now registered on Red Ferret Journal). Still need a Mojopac invite!

  • I’d love an invite if there are still any going …

  • Do you have any more invites? I would love to try this out….

  • OK folks, judging by the site they’re just about to open to the public today, so I’m afraid I can’t give you any more invites even though I’ve got lots left. In fact I can’t even get on the site myself. :-)

    Hopefully all will be revealed in a few hours and everyone will be able to play with this cool tool.

  • *sigh*

    So many issues not sorted out. Can’t use it on computers where you don’t have admin access, which means can’t use it in most internet cafes or universities.

    Can’t use it on internal HDDs in external enclosures (a serial number issue – apparently these drives come with 2 serial numbers – one from the manufacturer, and one created by the OS when it’s formatted.)

    Lots of people having issues. I WANT MY MOJO!

  • Hey Read can you send me an invite for this? Thanks.

  • I use MS Windows XP home on my PC. [AMD64 Athlon]
    During installation on an USB stick a mojo message appears: ‘No valid XP on the PC’.
    XP is installed on the I drive, not on C, can that be the problem?

  • Works fine on my ‘internal HDD in external enclosure’. It’s a bit too slow to be really usefull though. Not bad for diagnostic work though i guess.

  • Piet – yep, according to the folks at Mojo, it does need to be a standard XP install. Can’t have your boot drive being anything other than C:

    4ndy_b – what kind of internal HDD with external enclosure are you using? 2.5″? 3.5″? How did you get around the dual serial numbers issue that so many of us are having? Did you put your external HDD together yourself? How did you format the drive? Go to the mojopac forum and share what you did, cause STACKS of other people are having loads of difficulty with the serial number issue.

  • I used it on a usb key on my Fujitsu 4020 Tablet PC without any issues and it runs VERY fast…..

    Very useful product…..

  • ?? looked for a forum but couldn’t find one ??
    Aren’t all external hard drives just internal ones in external enclosures ??
    nothing complicated about how i put it together, built the drive, erased the partition in disk management then formated it. It’s not rocket science.

  • would someone please post the url for mojopac forums?

  • The forum URL is (predictably) http://www.mojopac.com/forum

  • Ooop, looks like they’ve closed down the forum because people managed to find a work-around for their “security measure” (ie product-crippling anti-piracy measure!) – the dreaded serial number issue.

    For those who didn’t see it on the forum (and I’m sorry Red if this gets you in trouble, just delete the comment if it does), the work-around for the serial number issue is by using TrueCrypt, which creates just a single unique serial number, rather than the two which are found on drive in USB enclosures.

    I’ve not tried it yet, but a few people reported back that it was working like a charm before MojoPac shut down the forum.

    But I’m sure that future versions of MojoPac will have ensured that you can’t use it with TrueCrypt. I’m starting to dislike these people as much as I like the idea of their product.

  • See my update Charlotte…

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