While portable Mac user accounts have been hinted at for quite some time, MacsimumNews is reporting that a new patent (number 20080201456), revealed by the US Patent & Trademark Office, talks about a device that would seemingly render user accounts portable.

According to the patent, which relates to multi-user computer systems , the method could also be used in an account management environment, for multi-user computer systems, the same source notes. The patent talks of a user account created on a multi-user computer which can be stored to an external, portable data store, thereby rendering the user account portable. The multi-user computer system locates user accounts not only in local storage of the multi-user computer system, but also in any removable data storage attached to the multi-user computer system, through its operating system.

"The invention relates to improved approaches for enabling user accounts to be portable across different multi-user computer systems," goes Apple's description. "A user account can be stored to an external, portable data store, and thus the user account becomes portable. Hence, by coupling the external, portable data store to another multi-user computer system, a user is able to login to any supporting multi-user computer system and be presented with their user configuration and user directory. Since the data store that stores the user account is not only external but also portable, a user can simply tote the data store to the location of the multi-user computer system. In one embodiment, the external, portable data store is able to be coupled to the multi-user computer system for data transfer there between."

"As a multi-user computer system, one embodiment of the invention includes at least an external data storage device and a multi-user computer," according to the patent. The removable external storage device is continuously touted "portable" throughout the patent description.

The inventors of such as device-and-method are: Robert T. Bowers and Steve Ko.