PC in your pocket

No. I’m not going to talk about UMPC. That little tablet is cool but expensive. :-).

So, let’s try something smaller and inexpensive. That’s “portable software” + “USB drive”.
Portable software’s are software, which doesn’t need to be installed. I mean, you click on the exe file and program works right away. Whenever I reinstall windows, it is accompanied by the works of installing old programs again. So, I keep all portable programs in a folder to use after installing fresh windows.

The point is that, if you put these programs in a USB drive, you can plug it into any computer and use them without installing on that PC. The best part of it is FireFox browser. You know, when you surf Internet on someone else PC, you left all your footprints there. So just use your own copy of portable Firefox from your USB drive and leave that PC as if untouched.

Actually, there are many programs with installer, which can be regarded as portable. You just take a copy of installed folder and use it without installing later. In that case, Photoshop is portable; Opera is portable and many other more. Try it yourself!!! ;-)

Oh, we are still using OS of host PC. Why don’t we run our own OS. There are lots of Live CD Linux distros. (I love Knoppix!!!) So insert your live CD and run that machine on the fly. DSL is damn small that it fits in 64 MB USB flash drive.

Note:
USB drives are USB flash drive, USB Hard Disk drive (including mp3 players with HD), USB zip drive, etc.

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Links:
http://portableapps.com/
The Ultimate Portable Utilities for a USB Key. [link via digg]
http://portablefirefox.mozdev.org/
http://www.portablefreeware.com/
http://www.tinyapps.org/
http://www.darkvelvet.com/support/portapps.shtml
http://www.techtastic.ca/articles/portable.html

Update:
I forgot to check wikipedia.
So, here we go. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_portable_applications  (thanks gHack.)
And here are some more useful links for running Linux from USB.
HOW TO: Run Other OSes On Your PC at J_K9 @ Linux
Tech by Colin - Articles - Running Linux Inside Windows
Linux screensaver for Windows

I just tested QEMU-Puppy (Linux), which is launched inside windows. Everything works automatically with QEMU and there is nothing to handle UNIX things. (But, I think it’s not as good as KNOPPIX. Running an OS inside OS is too much load for CPU and RAM.) Here is how to boot from USB Flash drive. (I haven't tried it yet.)

Technorati Tags: software, USB, portable apps