The problem can be anywhere downstream of the can. After a vacation, I pulled 12 out of a cleanout T in my yard from a house-sitter we won't be using again...
Surf is great if you want one very slim browser for reading and some other fat browser for webapps. I've been really impressed how much more advanced surf is compared to dillo.
This is actually a really good, practical solution. Use the platforms you don't trust, just don't give them internet access. It won't work for every case, but probably a lot of them.
I think I'd get overly frustrated transferring files, but if you have a good solution for that...
Yeah, I occasionally connect a linux laptop on both networks (ipforwarding OFF) with an http port open that exposes my fileserver mounted on the laptop via NFS. If that's too hard, I just pull the hard drives out and connect to my workstation with USB, also good for imaging the machines since they crash so dang often.