I used to go to a small cafe nearby the office for checking personal e-mails at lunch.  Well, not all companies allow staffers to use webmail in the office.  As usual, those were Windows PC powerful enough for you to play 3D games.  Actually, it was just too powerful so a lot of patrons just went ahead to install their own messenger software, toolbars, etc.  It didn't make me feel comfortable because there might be spyware or keyloggers installed as well!

So, a funny idea popped.  If those were all Linux PCs with only a limited guest access, then perhaps I wouldn't see 3 toolbars occupying the precious screen space on the browsers, and no ICQ etc. popping up here and there to catch my attention.  What I needed was only a browser, any browser, and not even the mail client.

After a bit of research, I've found that to the added bonus, not only can we have a simple Linux PC, but also an extremely small PC in a form factor called Mini-ITX.

It was some 5 months ago dated back in Oct 2005...  Anyway, better late than never - here are records of my experiments.