Cheapest Way to Track free Surfing

What is the cheapest way to get on the internet? Why, mooch off of someone else, of course!

So, let's use a friend's computer. But you don't want to leave all your tracks on their computer, do you? One of the easiest ways to use another computer without leaving a trace is to use a livecd.

There are a variety of livecd's out there, and I've tried a great many of them. A livecd is an entire operating system (OS) on a cd. So, instead of running the Windows (or whatever) OS on your buddies computer, you would simply put in a livecd as the computer boots-up and allow it to boot to the cd rather than the hard drive. Then all of your work would be done via the cd without the computer's hard-drive knowing anything about it. Nothing installed, nothing left behind.

What type of livecd is best? Well, I'm going to say for the average user that is just getting off of the Windows OS train, try the PCLinuxOS 2007 livecd. Go to their website, find out how to burn a cd iso file, download it, burn it to a cd, then you are ready to go. Completely free, except for the cost of having a cd to burn it on.

PCLinuxOS is great 'cause it is about the most Windows-ish of Linux versions out there. By that I mean it finds almost any hardware, has a long list of drivers, has a great forum/community that will work for you, all for free. Very tough to beat. Of course, the geek-ier you become the more you can pick a livecd that is closer to the specifics you want and/or you can re-master your own livecd. Recently I've enjoyed the PCFluxboxOS (an off-shoot of PCLinuxOS) that I configured to my own spec's.

Now that you've got your livecd, you are ready to get started. Find a cooperative friend, make sure their computer's bios are ready to boot to cd (most are already set to that) and get that cd going. Now you can surf, nothing is stored, the friend's computer is essentially untouched!

But what about data storage? As mentioned in the past (and in the future) there is a great deal of data storage for free online. But I have been very impressed with external hard-drive prices these days. I saw this one on Amazon at 500 Gigs for $120, an amazingly good price. This could be easily taken with you, boot the livecd, put all your data on the external hard drive, no computer of your own necessary!

Of course, you have to make sure you have a friend that is willing to help you out. Or, at the very least, a computer that you can play with. With someone else's computer, a livecd and an external hard drive there is very little that you can't do in the internet world.