A method and system for support of personal computing in a public computing infrastructure. The system including a plurality of computers to be used by patrons of a public computing infrastructure. The system also includes one or more servers coupled to the plurality of computers via a network connection. Each of the plurality of computers includes a virtual machine monitor. The virtual machine monitor has a plurality of base virtual machine images, each of the base virtual machine images is customized for a particular hardware and software configuration representing a specific computing environment. The virtual machine monitor launches one of the plurality of base virtual machine images, arbitrates access to system resources via the launched virtual machine image, stores the changes in the state of the virtual machine image when a user terminates a session, and returns a computer to an appropriate state to enable the user to resume the terminated session in subsequent sessions.