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I found this on Lifehacker and it is awesome. It is not totally portable (it needs admin rights) but it is still really cool. It is essentailly a persistent install of Ubuntu running within Windows without a VM. Really cool. Vids, Screenshots, and downloads are below.
http://lifehacker.com/5195999/portable-ubuntu-runs-ubuntu-inside-windows
kewl thanks for bringing this up 
oh and the link for the project is actualy
http://portableubuntu.sourceforge.net/index.php?section=main
Monday edit: This %*#&^ doesnt work. i tried as much as i could but it would not work. the intrustions on how to use it are slim and the self exctracting zip tok a full length movie to extract.
the hardware i tried it on was a AMD Turon X2 with 3GB ram and a 8gb kingston data traveler thumbdrive.
Also it requires the installation of a driver so not truly portable : (
but I have treid on many machines, inside w2k (old laptop 512mb ram) and on my desktop at work, also on other old machines with XP of different versions and it did work in all cases.
Unzipping did take time not much unususal for the size, ok it took some minutes.
Also when it starts, it takes some time, but then it can be used almost normally.
I found some bugs in the keyboard setting of the gui, it does not correctly work with th xming and the colinux kernel, but sure this will be solved somehow.
So far from all of the portable linux I have met around was this the most spectacular I have to say. The other once run under quemu mostly or in some virtual machine appart from those which boot directly from the stick.
The ubuntu here works even on machines where this version of ubuntu refuses to work otherwise.
It accepts normal updates from the ubuntu servers, one can install software from the ubuntu server and all looks pretty native.
OK it runs slowly on my machines, all of them are kind of older models, not much ram etc. But I have to say it runs much faster on those old machines then under quemu.
Actually I was starting it under restricted account on one xp machine , and it did work without complain. So it looks quite poratble to me. I am not sure, but as far as I understand the colinux principle, it is not using drivers, it operates directly on the hardware beside the windows and it does not interact with windows in any matter. It simply takes recources, that is why both win and linux will be rather slow on old machines.
Mir:
I believe you have some bad copy, download problem or similar, try other download , on my laptop (dell latitude C400 with w2k) it work like charm. Running it from the stick!
i doubt i downloaded a bad copy because i checked it and the md5 matches. 
i will try again later.
Also what the %*&^ do you click to start the %&^* program?
there is a bat file, called run_portable_ubuntu.bat, this is the one you should start it with.
It starts some daemons, a green arrow might appear in the taksbar.
Then simply wait. It will all take time. Finally, the usual task bar of ubuntu/gnome will appear on the top of your screen.
Note , the password for the root tasks is then 123456 set by the authors. So whatever you call yourselves as user, the password for root tasks will be 123456.
Yes I know, all those things are in fact just a joke, for real work, no, you need to boot from a media the OS alone. Neither quemu nor this can be understud as more then an interesting 'proof of concept', particularly when run from a flash stick with its dead slow transfer rate. But this one is from my point of view the most spectacular one. I tink the colinux website has also some more simpler distros under colinux, this might work then little bit faster.
i actualy did that an nothing happened for 4 hours. :/ man i hate vista. i cant even change into the directory of my flash drive using the command prompt >:|
in such case it could be that the daemons which need to be started need admin rights?
Did you try under admin rights?
I remamber to have tried once on restricted xp and it started, but check this again.
My machines here at work are all admin rights defoult since in a 'island' network.
There all works, slow, but works.
On both xp and w2k , I treid with only 512mb ram, some 5 year old machine, one laptop other desktop and all works from stick. It works much faster if you copy it to internal drive, but that was not the original idea of it.
i am using a vista machine and i should have admin rights already but i dont know. vista is doing some weird crap that XP never did.
when you click on it and the cmd just very fast flashes , is not able to start.
If you open the cmd with admin rights, you can use run as option, then you should be able to change to the directory where the port ubuntu sits and run the bat file. After that, a green arrow, should appear in the tray bar. If not, the 3 processes concerning the work under windows were not started and so the rest will not start either.
I just did verify that on a really well restricted xp machine, that it is so. So admin rights needed to start the demons (services) here, it will be 3 of them finally.
if you use vista 64 bit, it might not work, the demons of the linux , providing the hardware 'borrowing' seem not to work under 64 bit systems.
In 32 bit vista, you have to open the cmd with admin rights first, then go to the file and run it manually from there.
Sorry, I have no experience with vista, so did not know this is essential there.
you need to disable uac unfortunetly I was playing with this for a while before lifehacker thought of writing the article 
and I had to do that to get it working in 32bit Vista Home Premium SP1
I tried everything now and it has all failed. Its sad really because i was looking forward to having linux on my other laptop. now to find linux for my pocket PC >:)
It's a known fact, coLinux doesn't work on Windows x64. And it was mentioned on this forum already.
Mods please remove. Thanks.
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