External Computing

Recently, I made the decision to do all my computing off an external drive. Just in time, too, as both my laptop and HDD decided to bite the big one today. XP

Right now, I'm working out of my brother's machine using the Ubuntu 10.04 partition I have set-up on my external. The ability to use my own environment anywhere I can select a boot device has always appealed to me, and I'm glad now that I don't have a computer of my own anymore it's working as intended.

Has anyone else thought about, or gone ahead and done something like this? Or do you think this whole idea seems unnecessary, impractical?

I do this on a 8 gig USB stick with Ubuntu. It helps for cleaning computers and stuff like that. I don't use it for personnel use, only for work.

... but you actually just gave me an idea.

I like this idea, but it wouldn't work well if you were a gamer. Unless you play games that don't take many resources.