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Linux live CDs are developing in all kinds of interesting directions. One of
them is the ability to carry your entire custom computing environment on a
USB key that's small enough to fit in your pocket. There's no reason for
this to have an actual OS on it (though there are petite Linux distros that
can be made to fit). Instead, the OS you use with it can be a live-CD-based
distro like Knoppix. You can take a CD with you, or even rely on
downloading a copy off the Internet wherever you might be. Or pick up a
free copy bundled with a computer magazine--they pretty much grow on trees
these days.

Result: the ultimate in computing portability. Sit down in front of a
machine anywhere in the world, and boot it up within minutes into your
custom environment. Work with your own documents and personalized settings,
save your changes back to the USB key, take it and the CD out, reboot, and
the machine you borrowed is back to whatever it was running before, with no
sign left that you were ever there. Flexibility in a way that Dimdows is
struggling to match.

Just one of many ideas from Marcel Gagné's book
<http://madpenguin.org/cms/html/47/5406.html> "Moving to Linux: Kiss the
Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!".