linux on a windows box

[Georgina]

Hi. I don't no about booting from USB devices, but how would that help? 

Well you can put a live CD on a USB stick and right to the stick.  Or use a
combination of a Live CD and USB stick.  Of course the stick will take a
hammering by compiling stuff but there cheap enough.

Take a look at GRML, ideal I would have thought for what you want.  I've put
GRML on a 1Gig USB stick.  It would be easy to insert the swspeakup command
in the syslinux.cfg so it'd come up talking all the time.

I've got a 120Gig external sata 2.5 hard disk that requires no power supply.
I've installed Fedora upon it and can boot it from my Asus eee PC.  When
I've refined my process and hardware, I'll be producing them to custom
orders.  
 
Take care.

Gena