I'm at a friend's place. I start up Word to write down some text. I hate how everything is configured, I can't find anything. So I choose 'online preferences', enter my password and user name, and everything jumps into place, like I'm used to it. When I'm done, I reset it to how it was.

Emacs users have been doing this of course, by carrying their macros and config-files with them.
-- lkozma, Sep 06 2007

Baked, methinks http://docs.google.com/
Configured the same whever you log in from. [DrCurry, Sep 06 2007]

Everyone should simply conform to a well thought out set of default preferences, just like vi users.

Oh, and for real emergencies:
stty erase ^H

-- zen_tom, Sep 06 2007


I've a U3 flash drive with Open Office on it, so I can say that yes, having your preferences available is a good thing.
-- baconbrain, Sep 06 2007


This is excellent.

Microsoft does all have a way to save all your Office settings & preferences, e.g. for when you get a new computer. It's Start | All Programs | Microsoft Office | Microsoft Office Tools | Save My Settings Wizard. You do this and a file with extension .msw or something gets saved on the desktop. Possibly, you could set up a new user profile on your friend's computer and apply these settings (go to the same place to import Office settings from a file and then point it to this file) and it restores the Office settings. Hopefully this would not disturb settings for other user profiles on the same machine.

Or, your friend could first save his/her settings and then reapply them after you.

But for the main Windows settings, there's nothing you can transport and you're stuck with whatever horrible color/interface theme your friend is using.
-- phundug, Sep 06 2007


Given that Google Docs works this way, I think the problem is simply that you're using the wrong program.
-- DrCurry, Sep 06 2007


No, actually, I think there's an important distinction here. "Cloud computing", where google already is and Microsoft is headed, hosts the application centrally and basically implements it on top of the browser.

As mainstream everyday tools, that's doomed, because it's slow, depends on the browser and bandwidth to function, and browsers always suck, and bandwidth mostly sucks.

*This* is a much more lightweight, and more easily implemented, suggestion that keeps the hard, detailed stuff on the computer, where it belongs, and just centralizes the small configuration file.
-- jutta, Sep 06 2007


"more easily implemented" - clearly not much experience with Microsoft Office products there... ;)

P.S. sp. synchronization
-- DrCurry, Sep 06 2007


I said MS Word as an example. In fact I meant Word/Excel/Photoshop/Firefox or any desktop app, or the desktop itself.
-- lkozma, Sep 07 2007


Ah. Then what you're after, in geek speak, is a roaming desktop profile, commonplace (if not exactly error free) on corporate networks, used to control access to applications as well as provide consistent desktop environments and settings to given users.

Roaming profiles can access the server over a VLAN, which will give you what you need, but is, as with most things to do with Windows networking, ridiculously complicated to set up and administer.

Citrix servers will also give you roaming profiles, but there you're turning the PC into a client accessing software running on the remote server.
-- DrCurry, Sep 07 2007



random, halfbakery