Date: 02/20/06 (Computer Geeks)    Keywords: browser, html, virus, web, spyware, linux

If you're a Windows or Linux user (the former especially), and you ever need to do a bit of surfing on a particularly shady website, and you want to protect your PC from any nasty spyware or other malicious code that might be present, the usual tactic is to rummage around for hardware, build a sacrificial system, install an operating system and applications, add it to your LAN, and get to the site in question.

Instead, try the VMware Browser Appliance. It's a self-contained copy of Firefox (running on Ubuntu Linux, but that's largely irrelevant -- Firefox is Firefox, from a user standpoint) that runs as "virtual machine" on your computer. When it runs, it runs inside its own window, not just on screen, but in memory, and the hard drive. It's completely boxed in: nothing you load can get to your other applications, or your hard drive, or onto your computer in any way other than inside that pre-defined box. It makes a great environment for testing website design, or testing a web application you're writing, or investigating a potential virus site, or anything else that you would be more comfortable not using your main PC for. You can configure it to either wipe itself completely clean every time you use it, or to retain the settings (bookmarks, cookies, etc) between uses.

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/vm/browserapp.html

Source: http://community.livejournal.com/computergeeks/881615.html