USB memory bootable Pianoteq Expander

This could be a good idea with a lot of potential, but I think it's not so simple to get a plug-in USB distribution working on all hardware.

For instance, the JACK Audio Distribution is linux-based, can run VST plugins like Pianoteq, and comes in a live USB form.  It's almost exactly what you describe!  Unfortunately when I tried it on my computer the live distribution just made my hardware freeze up.  And I bought my computer's hardware with linux support in mind (linux is my default distribution).

I'm trying to get Pianoteq working on my linux box, and think I should be able to get better-than-windows performance, but it's definitely a learning experience.  I can see how the Pianoteq people, who probably don't run linux themselves, don't want to have to know and support linux on random hardware.

Perhaps in a year when the audio distributions are more stable, Pianoteq can offer a live distribution w/ Pianoteq.

In the meantime the Pianoteq people may want to become more familiar with linux issues, as more of their customers start running Pianoteq under linux (including Muse Receptor, which is a linux box).

A module would be nice - but there is the version upgrade problem, and the cost of such a unit would be mostly in providing the user interface.

Why not consider a dedicated computer? Case and power supply do not need to be big or expensive (tho one might want to avoid noisy ones). Any old hard disk and graphics card will do, as would an old 15" TFT. So those items could use recycled parts from old machines. The only up-to-date items would need to be mainboard, cpu and memory (and perhaps a low-end graphics card now that AGP is almost dead). But as Pianoteq has dual core support, even a low-end Intel Core2Duo should have enough processing power. Total cost should be quite modest.

Yes, and I'm sure you are not referring to the product licensing. Boot times get shorter with faster cpus ;-) It should also be possible to configure Windows to load the minimum drivers and services necessary (e.g. networking stacks not required), but I cannot say how much of an improvement that would bring. Perhaps even half a minute load-time might be too long in a performing setting.

The bright spot is that Pianoteq has not hung or crashed my system yet - perhaps others can confirm it is robust. (My guess is it does not do a whole lot of dynamic memory allocation, which is the thing that can cause performance degradation).

I think that a response might be that  Receptor is essentially what you're talking about, albeit not from the ultra cheap USB side of things that plugs into a PC, but if the point is to have a module as per:

   "Some dummies does not take care about the integration with plenty of other softwares. They need an "expander", with super piano sound, no latency, Midi-In, Line-Out. Nothing more."

...then I'd figure a dedicated hardware module is far easier to run than an intel box with a sound card. Of course, they are not as cheap as a USB drive.