That’s truly amazing! I rarely use my USB drive, but these suggestions open up a whole new world of possibilities! Who knew, lol. Thanks for sharing - I guess I know what I’ll be spending some time on this week!

This is such a useful post, thanks! I neglect my USB drive entirely too much but now I am going to change that.

I have used a USB drive before to save some client work, but I have never see or heard of these apps. I am definitely checking them out now.

Arrggh!
ToDoList looks like it might be what I need but unfortunately the author’s idea of ‘documentation’ is truly bizarre. It consists, apparently of a configuration screen with no explanation at all of the features or how to use them.

Either I have missed something terribly obvious in my half hour or so of floundering around the site and program or this thing is destroyed by lousy docs.

Cool tips!

With the sizes of the thumbdrives you can install a fully functional Linux development environment to carry wherever you go! The only thing you need is to be able to change the settings of the PC to start the machine from the USB drive.

I think, using Google Docs or Zoho is easier than syncing all documents on flashdrive Only advanced tools for img or source code editing (photoshop, vi) are must-have on the USB drive.

I don’t trust the usb pen drive thingies, 3 have died on me with around a gig of data on each, but I do use a usb external hard drive (laptop drive) for storing work and email so I can switch between my desktop and laptop easily.

Using google apps for my email now means I don’t have to store anything locally and can access it anywhere, so that should mean I rely less on the the external HD.

Thanks everyone for the nice comments.

@Pristine- I think the new version of openoffice (coming soon) which should have a portable edition too, will allow you to read those files.

Really cool tips. Thanks for the post. I’m in dire need of a thumb drive. I guess that’s #2 on my wish list right after the new iPhone, haha.

@Pristine: Have you tried using Google Docs to work with your Word files? You can upload them and edit them, save them, and download them again all online.

I’ll stick to web apps and using my USB thumb drive for file backup.

I love portable applications! By now almost everything is available as a portable apps of some sort. And the big advantage over web apps is that they still work even if the internet is down. So I can work on my invoices without the need for an internet connection.

Pstart (http://www.pegtop.net/start/) adds a nice Start-menu-like functionality to your portable applications. Especially if combined with an USB auto-run application which can start specific applications when ever the drive gets plugged in.

But I wouldn’t recommend a thumb drive for portable apps. Thumb drive have to habit of dying and they fill up pretty quickly if you run an email application on it. I’m the proud owner of one of this super small external hard disk which just run of USB and don’t need any additional power.

I use Portable Apps on my thumb drive and it is great! Add a few Firefox add ons and you can sit down at any Windows computer and almost be at your office. It has come in very handy to do work for clients when I have been away at relatives or at hotels with no laptop handy and only a public computer to use.

I have had mixed success with portable apps. I used them heavily a few years ago when my job required working on an office PC. The transition of the applications to portable device has been done quite seamlessly, and the only limitations are the lack of speed. Unfortunately when the software needs to write to the device (such as with Firefox auto updates) it can take a long time.

My advice to portable apps users: Update your software in your spare time or when you’re cooking dinner

You can also upgrade your thumbdrive slightly to a portable harddisk and store all your design resources there. I commute quite a bit so it is very useful for me having my plugins, stock photos, patterns etc portable with me where I go

USB thumb drives are great! The first time I saw one, a few years back, I was blown away by them. At the time, no portable drive was so small and convenient.

I also just got the USB Verizon WIFI broadband (about half the size of a cell phone, and comes with its own cell number), now I can go anywhere in the US with my laptop and be connected. This just changed my life. Monthly service fees just dropped drastically, making it affordable. Am looking forward to an international version of this to be more commonly available.

Thanks for the extra tips.

What a wonderful and helpful article - thanks so much!!