On-demand computing
When we would sit in front of any PC, anywhere, and with the digital equivalent of having all the applications and data at beck and call.
Many people carry their data around on a USB stick - presentations, documents, spreadsheets, you name it - why not carry the programs too! Portable applications are built for the sole purpose of being run off a USB stick - no installation, no writing settings to anything other than its own folder, and best of all, nearly all of them are free.
The Demands
Finding the best portable application for your needs is all about balancing size and features. Your first consideration is that the application should not write any settings to the host computer - you don't really want to leave your mark anywhere, do you? The next priority is size - the need is several small programs than one that hogs all the space. After all, even 512 MB USB drives can get full alarmingly quickly, and the more room is their for data, the better it is. Smaller applications have fewer features, but few of us use all the bells and whistles in most of the software.
Before proceeding, remember that all the applications need to be crammed into 200 MB of space - the remaining 300-odd should be kept free for data. Small size is a priority, but as far as possible, any compromise on features will not be there.
The office Suite
Portable OpenOffice.org is the choice right from its excellent support for all common MS Office formats to its MS Office-like interface, however, it weighs a lot (144 MB) taking up a huge chunk of the limit. If only Word processor is required, then AbiWord can be used which takes up only 15 MB of space.
The E-mail Client
On one hand, there is i.Scribe, a small seemingly simple e-mail client that fills up only 1 MB of space. It even comes with its own Bayesian spam filter, and is extremely light on system resources.
At the other end of the spectrum is Portable Thunderbird, which brings to the USB all the features of Mozilla Thunderbird - e-mail, internal support for RSS feeds, a spam filter and a spell checker. On the flip side, it occupies 9 MB.
The Anti-Virus
Now, be safe in assuming that USB drive is being connected to a clean PC with carrying an anti-virus with you. ClamWin is a free, open source, 18 MB antivirus that comes from the ClamAV team, who have been developing the Clam anti-virus engine since the days of DOS. To have ClamWin on USB, the software must be installed on a PC and follow the manual to set it up for USB drives. Remember, it isn't real-time or on-access scanner, so the program must be started manually and choose the file(s) to be scanned.
The PIM
For busy individuals who need to keep track of their tasks and schedules, EssentialPIM is very useful Personal Information Manager (PIM), which looks a little like Outlook's PIM side. You can use it to create to-do listss, schedule meeting and appointments, manage contacts, and leave little notes to yourself.
The Browser
There are only three browsers worth mentioning - Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. Unfortunately, Opera is not portable yet.
For IE users, Crazy Browser is available, a 500 KB browser that seams to be a head mix of all three - it uses the IE engine, but also brings in some cool features from another two, like tabbed browsing, plug-ins and mouse gestures.
The same open source community that's responsible for Portable OpenOffice.org and Portable Thunderbird also gives us Portable Firefox, which is just that - a fully functional USB version of the Firefox browser, including support for installing the insanely popular Firefox extensions, but at 17 MB, you are going to be crunched for space.
The Media Player
Work or play chances are that you can't escape without encountering a sound or video clip that needs viewing. Since the presence of codecs on the host can't be guaranteed, two such players exist which bundle the codecs alongwith.
VideoLan VLC Player which can play nearly any audio and video file in existence and doesn't require any codecs to be pre-installed. It's tad costly at nearly 25 MB though.
MPlayer is lot lighter at 7 MB and ofcourse, it too doesn't any codecs to be installed on the PC.
The Image Viewer
IrfanView supports a huge number of image formats, is light on system resources, easy to use and can even convert images to different formats with some good compression ratios
The PDF Reader
While Adobe Reader is the de facto for reading PDF documents, but it is bulky and a resource hog. Overcoming both these nags is Foxit PDF Reader. It occupies only 2 MB of space.
The Start Menu
PStart is a program that sits in the system tray and gives customized menu that lets to choose which application is required to run. It even hunts down executable files on the drive, so that manual entries are not required. Once all the applications are in place, just select scan for executables function to create portable start menu.
Making drive autorun
If the host is running Windows XP and SP2, then you can even make the USB stick autorun by specifying an autorun.inf file. Just follow the listed steps (an example of PStart menu is shown):
CODE
1. Open notepad and type in the following text
*[autorun]*
*open=Pstart.exe* (This is the application that you want to run)
*action=Open the Start Menu* (This is the description of the action performed)
*icon=Pstart.exe* (This is the icon which will be displayed in autorun menu)
2. Save the file as *autorun.inf* in the root of USB drive.
3. Don't forget to remove asterik signs from the text and delete all the text in paranthesis.
*[autorun]*
*open=Pstart.exe* (This is the application that you want to run)
*action=Open the Start Menu* (This is the description of the action performed)
*icon=Pstart.exe* (This is the icon which will be displayed in autorun menu)
2. Save the file as *autorun.inf* in the root of USB drive.
3. Don't forget to remove asterik signs from the text and delete all the text in paranthesis.
Making Stick Bootable
If you really want the freedom from host's OS, you can keep a copy of DSL (Damn Small Linux) OS in stick which is just 50 MB. It does comes with FluxBox Window Manager. However, on the hardware front, a bootable USB stick is required and the motherboard of the host PC must support booting from a USB device.
