An excellent set of free, portable, open source tools are available if you need to access your work on the move. All you need is a portable storage drive (e.g. a USB Stick) and a computer to connect it to. You might recognise these programs, but the ony difference here is that they run off your portable drive, so the computer you are on does not have to have these programs installed.
The first and best place to start looking for portable apps is at http://portableapps.com/ where you find portable versions of many of the applications already reviewed on this site.
It offers over 41 portable applications designed to run from your USB stick and now gives you the option to download various portable suites of selected programs depending on the size of your drive. Nowadays you can find 4 Gigabyte USB sticks fairly cheaply and that should be far more space than you need for these applications.
The most important applications are probably the trusty OpenOffice and Thunderbird apps we know and love, although you can’t go wrong with Firefox (internet browser) and ClamWin Portable which will check your files and computer for viruses. You also have a selection of games to choose from, instant messangers, ftp programs and even the Mac OS (operating system) 7.
Advantages:
1) Free
2) Portable!
Using portable apps on the go means that all of your settings and programs are saved to your memory stick. Therefore if, for example, you do some work on your computer at home, travel abroad, and then continue from the hotel, all of your settings, contacts, documents, spell checker languages, extensions, etc will be exactly the same as you left them.
3) Secure
It doesn’t matter if the computer you are using has not been patched or updated in years, the software you are running from your USB will be up-to-date.
If you are the paranoid type, checking your emails on Thunderbird is far more secure on a public computer because your passwords are stored and encrypted in your key chain. Therefore you will not have to type your password online and potentially give away your password to any lurking key loggers or malware.
4) Easy to uninstall
Just click on the program folder and delete it.
5) Easy to back-up
Select all the files and folders, click copy, paste to your back up area (your computer, another drive, online, wherever.)
6) Presentations
Not a massive advantage, but if you are giving presentations on the move, portable OpenOffice will enable you to run your presentation from any computer, saving you the worry that some computers may have different versions of Powerpoint (which actually makes presentations run slightly differently, especially if your presentation uses precise timings) or no software at all.
Con’s
Despite the numerous avantages and sheer convenience of portable apps, working entirely from your USB Stick can also be your biggest downfall – unless you back-up properly!
1) You can lose your USB Stick.
Not only will you loose all of your unbacked up data, but in the wrong hands it will give another person access to all of it. Make sure you password protect the contents of your USB to avoid prying eyes. If you are worried about keyloggers, make sure that you password protect it with a different password to any of your others.
2) USB sticks have a shelf life.
Modern hardware usually lasts for quite a bit of time, but you will seldom get much warning before they decide to give up on you, and all the bumping and knocking against your keys in your pocket will only serve to shorten its life too.
