Running a hosted computer in your browser.

What? You can not run a hosted computer in your browser. Actually you can now the virtual machines have advanced so much that instead of the output of the virtual machine just going to a window on your computer, it can be re-directed to a web browser.  So if you have software for your older obsolete machines, you can in a lot of cases still run that software. This is especially important for those old games you still can not put down.  One the web based machines we like to run is the good old Commodore 64.

So when the better half wants you to move onto new equipment, just let her know you need a web server for biz reasons. She does not have to know. Older computers are nice, but it would be even nicer if you could run multiple operating systems and be able to get to them from anywhere. Done. There are now several emulators that can run pc software such as Linux, BSD, and some of the proprietary operating systems.  A good example would be say at a kiosk where you obviously can not run your software. Just log into the web browser and point it towards your web server. Or you might be at a friends who only runs proprietary software, but you want to run Linux. Again, just get to your web browser.

You can even play with a command line linux in a browser at: http://bellard.org/jslinux/. This is great for teachers as they can expose students to the command line for linux compared to a mswindows command line without having to install or host linux. 

There are even some emulators that run on Java. You can find this on at: http://jpc.sourceforge.net/home_home.html. These are also great for schools to let students test other operating systems without having to install the software on machines. The only caveat is the disk space required for each student to be using their own disk image.

 

Anyway that is just a thumb nail of what you can do. As the descendants of Paladin might say: Have computer, will network......