Frequently Asked Questions

You can not download files directly onto your desktop from this service. This is a common source of viruses and we've tried to keep the separation between the external network and your local network absolute for the protection of your local network. We've been considering adding popular web-based file stores to save files to for your convenience but this will be a future release.

MySpace has recently changed their policy to redirect requests from the infrastructure we are using to host mypersonalbrowser.com to Google. We currently don't know why they have chosen to do this and we have reached out to them but have not yet received a response as of yet. We apologize for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: It seems that this behavior has changed back based on actions taken by myspace.com. We have no control over these activities but for the moment it looks like myspace is again available.

We are starting the equivalent of a computer for you. To do this requires computer servers and maintenance of the infrastructure. This is what we ask you for payment.

There are three main steps that take time before you can actually see the remote browser.

First, we need to start a whole computer on your behalf. As when you boot up your home computer, this takes at least 2-4 minutes. We keep computers running on stand by so that most users won't see this except occasionally when we're doing maintenance or we have a large number of users suddenly come onto the system.

Second, for the first time you use this application on any computer/browser combination we need to download an approximately 4 Megabyte browser plug-in to support communications between your browser and the remote computer. This is first time cost only or when we need (infrequently) to upgrade the browser plug-in. This is a first time cost only. The next time this step won't be required.

Third, we need to establish a secure connection between the web browser and the remote computer. This typically takes up to a minute depending on exactly the state of the various computers and the network latency. This step will always be required.

In total, it may be many minutes before actually being able to type in the application. Typically we expect to take up to a minute most times. While this is longer than typically web applications, because we are doing more than what a typically web application is able to do we believe it is worth the wait.

In general any modern brower on a modern operating system like Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 2+, Opera 9+ or Chrome on a Windows or Linux system with a modern version of Java installed will work. While the minimum that will work is Java Runtime Engine 1.4.2 installed on the computer, it is highly recommended that Java 1.6 update 10 or above is used.

More specifically the system requirements for Java are as follows:

• 1.4.2 for all systems,
• 1.6.0 update 10 for Windows Vista and Windows 7,
• 1.6.0 update 11 for Chrome browser (independent of OS version)

In some cases on Vista, mypersonalbrowser.com reports an out-of-date Java version when in fact a newer version has been installed. In those cases, check for and disable older versions by going to the Control Panel, opening the Java Control Panel and on the Java tab check the Java Runtime Environment Settings by clicking on the View button. Unchecking older Java versions and leaving the newer version should correct the problem.

Mac support is limited to the latest version of the Mac OS only and even then we have seen problems. If you experience problems, we please ask you to report them. Of course if you can not use the service we will happily refund any money you have paid.

Sorry. Right now we have not implemented sound from the remote browser to the local client. We are investigating this for a future iteration but right now we don't have a timeframe for deployment.

You will need to allow XWin and Java through the Windows Firewall if you wish to use this service.

In a word, nothing. We've found there are at least two types of security policies at companies. The first type restricts access because they don't want their employees spending there time on certain websites they define. We respect this and we don't want to work around it.

The second type of security policy respects the fact that people can manage their time but restricts access because they need to protect their business networks from "bad things" on the internet like viruses and such. For this type of company we believe we provide a service which protect their networks but allows employees to use these sites like Facebook.

We try to be open with the security folks and not be a hidden workaround so we don't try to do much when a company chooses to block our site.