Vonage V-Phone - phone on a stick

I’ve read a number of articles recently about the Vonage V-Phone - a VoIP phone application which runs from a memory stick. The device costs £19.99 with a £7.99 monthly rate which gives free local and national calls to landlines.

Some thoughts:

It runs directly from the memory stick (no software installed on the PC). So you should be able to run it from any PC (but not Apple Macinitosh) with a USB. This has the opotential of freeing the user from the limitations of the IT Services provided.  Or, from another perspective, portable applications like this habe the potential to degrade the nework by letting users runpotentailly diruptive applications.

This is the first device of its type which I’ve seen.  We can expect the price to go down  as competitors relase  similar products (or, alternatively, the feature  set may become richer) .

I have a momory stick which runs Portable Firefox and Portable Miranda.  I’ve used Portable FireFox on a ouple of occasions, when only IE was available. We are seeing a growth in the number of portable applications. In the fuure will the student carry their preferred applications around on their memory stick (as a key ring, or bracelet, perhaps) leaving the institution to provide the monitor, keyboard and operating system environment?