Gotcha. That sounds kind of cool actually.
It sounds like an interesting way to let people try out linux without fear of screwing up their system.
But, as you point out, there is a lot of stuff that you wouldn't be able to do. You could not save even text documents or graphics files...is it only to the HD, like could I create a text doc and save it to a flash drive?
Anyways, I recommend Ubuntu (I'm still using Hardy Heron - 8.04). As a matter of fact, as soon as I can afford an external hard drive, I will be wiping windows from my main machine and running linux on it. [Don't worry, I won't leave DC. I'm going to run a virtual server and have an instance of XP Pro.]