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iPods: Where the police keep their PCs
'Oi, sarge, it's a storage device that thinks it's a music player...'

By Jo Best

Published: Wednesday 09 March 2005

One software company has turned the iPod into the storage equivalent of the Tardis and developed an application that allows users to carry their PC inside the Apple music player.

After developing an application on a USB stick that allowed users to port their Windows desktop - files, folders, Outlook emails, preferences, cookies and the like - to any computer they're working on and remove it again after they've finished, Powerhouse Technologies found users crying out for more storage - so the company looked for an alternative to traditional memory sticks.

With 30 days' worth of desktop data taking up relatively little space on a hard disc and 98 per cent of storage space on MP3 players going unused, according to a recent survey from mobile content firm WebTV Europe, the company turned to the iPod for the answer.

Powerhouse president Greg Duffell said: "The IT world being what it is, everyone believes they must have Gigs and Gigs and Gigs. iPods go right up to 60GB... and enabled us to meet a part of the market where people were saying they need something bigger."

Duffell said he currently has three iPods, two of which are used purely for storage.

"I'm sitting there with a 40GB piece of wonderful machinery in front of me thinking 'What on earth can I fill it up with?' I found a lot people with the same dilemma," he added.

Duffell says the Powerhouse app, Migo for iPod, has found favour with students and teleworking salespeople in particular as a way of negotiating between the numerous PCs they use in the course of a day without the security risk of using a standard USB key and leaving traces of documents on a PC that could be found by a stranger. Instead the software and the virtual desktop are locked into the firmware of the device.

The security element is apparently wooing some of the uniformed public sector, with trials of Migo for iPod now under way in areas of the UK police and military.

"There are instances where they need to carry data around between bases and units" without having to carry a laptop, Duffell said.

The software can also cope with shifting between different iterations of Windows on PCs. However, the device isn't yet available for shifting between Macs or Linux-based OSes, although Duffell confirmed the company is looking at adapting the software for other platforms.