Notes Client on USB key

IBM announced Project “Wanda” at Lotusphere2006.

Project Wanda : for roaming users you can carry for entire Notes experience on a usb key that can plug into any computer regardless of if it has notes installed.

This is a great idea. I’m not at Lotusphere; so I’m not able to ask for further details. ( anyone out there who has details and would share his knowledge ? )
I guess, that they will use U3 technologie to accomplish this.

But why wait for Wanda ?
For all of you, who haven’t already have a Notes Client “installation” on an USB-key, here is what I did:

I just copied my local Notes folder to the key and tweaked the notes.ini. That was easy, wasn’t it ?

Ok, there are a few limitations:

  • The stick must have at least 350 MB of free space
  • Depending on the drive letter you have to tweak the notes.ini manually once again
  • You cannot start a Notes Database by double-clicking ( registry entries are missing).

As a workaround whilst waiting for Wanda, I will write a “starter” asap, so all you have to do is plug in the key and double click the nstart.exe. The nstart.exe will change the notes.ini for you.

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5 thoughts on “Notes Client on USB key”

  1. Hi,
    Very interested in this post. We dabbled in the USB option some time ago. Your nstart.exe file will be very useful.

    There are a few other issues, such as Virus/firewall software blocking Notes function. Also a flash drive is not really designed to manage database files that change frequently. We found ALL the USB flash drives we tried (5 or 6 different models and sizes) corrupted the one or more of the notes files at some time. A more stable option is a USB drive (eg. Freecom http://www.freecom.com/ecProduct_detail.asp?ID=1922) but these are not cheap. 🙁

    Here is an LDD link with some more details.
    http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/nd6forum.nsf/55c38d716d632d9b8525689b005ba1c0/5138a3a62c4106b185257011004a1910?OpenDocument&Highlight=0,USB

    Will be keeping a close eye on the wanda project.
    Cheers
    AJP

  3. I do this using a USB hard drive, though in a slightly different manner. I use VMWare, and carry around a vmware session on the usb drive. Now, with the recent release of the free VMWare player, all I have to do is install the player on the target machine and et voila: Windows launches with fully working Notes.

    Obviously VMWare is quite a demanding app and I had a different intent. I use SUSE Linux desktop at home and work, my laptop was killing my back, so this was a nice solution (at least until we actually get a Linux Notes client, then I’ll put that on a usb key :lol:)

    Anyway, another option 🙂

  4. love your nstart program ! Thankyou very much indeed.

    While it is brialliant heaven would be if you could have different releases on Notes clients in different folders and choose which one to use

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