[IAEP] is Soas safe?

[Yamandu Ploskonka]

My apologies for this silly, silly question.

I am concerned of the risk of malware infection in shared machines.

I guess that harddrive-less units are totally OK, but what happens in 
normal, hard-drive based machines if somehow a stick gets infected? when 
booting from a USB stick, is it like when booting from a CD or for those 
old enough to remember, like booting from a floppy? 

I mean, that was THE way to get infected before Word macros started 
being the star, since such infection basically bypass all anti-malware 
protection, except when set at the BIOS level, and how many people knew 
about it in my younger days?

How can we ensure this is not an issue made worse by Soas users?
Opinions and knowledge, anyone?

Thanks!

Yama