In addition to the aforementioned speed issue, which was completely expected and not nearly as bad as it could be, I ran across a couple of problems, especially when I put my newbie hat on and approached the VPM as a regular, non-Linux-savvy computer user.
It wasn't completely intuitive that "Xvesa" is the utility to change the screen resolution from the default 800x600 to a more sane 1024x768 or 1280x1024, but once I did it, the resolution change was painless. There are a couple of other Linuxy issues that a Windows user would find a little baffling. Setting up printing is not for the faint of heart, for example, and several other of the items in the control panel would be a bit cryptic. For most of them, if you don't know what they do, you can just leave them alone (like Ndiswrapper or lwconfig), but when you're searching for a way to change resolution or change other aspects of the default setup, it may take a bit of poking around if you're not familiar with Linux.
As I mentioned before, that cute guess-my-location-and-language game that Google plays with you is fun at first, but it's also an issue could become annoying when you're trying to get real work done. You can set your cookie for Google, of course, but you should be prepared to occasionally see large portal sites displaying in languages you don't understand. That's just one of the quirks that you have to deal with if you want effective anonymity.
Several times during my browsing I came across an error page stating: "Privoxy error" where the proxy servers weren't able to connect to the sites I was requesting, and I had to reload a couple of times before they came up. Again, one of the prices of anonymity.
The final quirk I discovered was the most annoying. Apparently, the system will not store the resolution change, so when I quit and re-launch VPM, it re-sets back to 800x600. I'm sure someone with more expertise than I could easily change the default to whatever they wanted, so this would cease to be an issue. Perhaps a tutorial on the web site is in order? Also, I noticed that various times during my messing around the system would fail to save the settings that I had changed, like Firefox bookmarks and settings, and once even an mp3 file that I had downloaded disappeared. This is due to the fact that when you shut down it saves your changes from RAM to the USB drive. (You can't be saving stuff constantly to these flash drives because they only have a finite number of saves in them). Always make sure you shut down properly, or you'll lose data. That's always a possibility with any system, but with this one, it's a certainty.
Conclusion
The Tor Desktop VPM costs $45 with free worldwide shipping. A blank 128 MB USB pen drive costs as little as $15 today, so you're paying about $30 for the convenience of having all of this software installed and configured for you. Since I don't know of very many people who need this kind of security whose time isn't relatively valuable, I'm going to rate this product a bargain. If you're interested in this mostly as a hobbyist exercise, then you'd certainly have fun making one on your own and customizing it to your heart's content, but if you have a pressing need for this kind of security, then the Virtual Privacy Machine is a great option.
In conclusion, the Tor Desktop Virtual Privacy Machine is a well-executed assemblage of various Free Software tools and a useful service, priced fairly, and delivered in a small, convenient package. It's suitable for use by anyone who uses public or insecure resources to access the internet and those who just want to keep their online activities private, such as cybercafe users, people whose bosses are likely to snoop on them at work, political activists (or just regular thinking people in repressive countries), people cheating on their spouses online, spies, crackers, OSNews trolls, and other mischief makers. Even minimally computer savvy people should have little problem using it, even though there are a couple of Linux and proxy-related quirks that might be a minor annoyance. It's an excellent example of a quality purpose-specific device that can be made from freely-available software.
More information:
Tor Desktop Virtual Privacy Machine
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