Patent ID: 8732704

Claim:
A computing device comprising: a processor; and a non-transitory machine readable medium comprising a plurality of instructions stored thereon that in response to being executed by the processor causes the computing device to launch a virtual machine monitor, the virtual machine monitor to: receive a selection of one of a plurality of virtual machine images by a user of the computing device, each virtual machine image corresponding to a different base computing environment being customized for a particular hardware and software configuration, and the selected virtual machine image corresponding to a first base computing environment; launch the selected virtual machine image corresponding to the first base computing environment; retrieve a first-delta image of a plurality of delta images stored remotely from the computing device, the first delta image comprises a differential update, with respect to the selected virtual machine image, that represents one or more changes made by the user to the first base computing environment, wherein only a single delta image is stored for each virtual machine image utilized by the user; apply the differential update of the first delta image to the selected virtual machine image to restore a personal computing environment of the user; and, in response to a request by the user to terminate a session of the restored personal computing environment, capture modifications by the user to the first base computing environment to store as the single delta image for the selected virtual machine image.