If you want to you can save your configuration (desktop settings etc) to your hard drive. You can also set up a Persistant Home Directory on your HDD, but be careful to say 'no' to the 'use entire drive' dialog (it'll wipe the entire drive), you'll then be able to specify the size of the partition. The script works for me (on 4 different machines including a laptop) so I'm assuming it's perfectly safe, it's certainly very easy!. You need a PHD (ha!..I only just spotted that acronym) to download files into, install software etc. I've got mine set to 300 Mb click> Knoppix > Configure > Create a Persistant Knoppix Directory