4 Ways to Carry your PC on iPod or USB Thumbdrive
Do you want to take your favorite programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more wherever you go and use them on pretty much any computer ? If so here are four free tools that can help you with that. These are portable software packs that can be installed on any USB device. Download the pack, install it on your portable device and done. Use it at work, a friend’s PC, college lab, anywhere.
1 Portable Apps Suite
Portable Apps Suite - is a collection of portable apps including a web browser, email client, office suite, instant messaging client, antivirus, sudoku game, program launcher menu (see above) and more, all preconfigured to work portably. If you’re looking for a hassle-free portable suite that’s the one you need.
Simply install it on your USB thumbdirve or any other portable device (iPod, mobile phone etc.) and you’re good to go. Carry and access your favorite programs, browser bookmarks, emails and more from any Windows PC. And as mentioned before, since everything runs directly from the portable device, no personal data is left behind.
The PortableApps Suite comes with about 10 programs by default. If you want you can easily add a lot more to it. There are about 50 programs to choose from, including goodies such as VLC media player, GIMP, 7 zip, Filezilla, Pidgin and even Sudoku game.
It’s free to use, free to copy and free to share.
2. MojoPack
MojoPack is not really a portable apps suite. It basically installs a mini Windows XP on your thumbdrive. The only difference, all the programs you add are always stored on the MojoPac (thumbdrive) and can be carried with you wherever you go. Once it’s up and running, you can download and install applications you want like on any other Windows XP computer.
It can be Skype, Firefox, Office software, whatever. Just plug it in to the host PC (office, hotel lobby etc.) and you have your own secure operating system including all of your programs, contacts, browse favorites, chat buddies, games etc. Keep in mind though at the moment MojoPac runs only on Windows XP PCs. Vista support is on the way.
And here is another screenshot of my MojoPac with Firefox in it.
Despite all the pros I have experienced some issues with it. Firstly, I have tested it on an 8 GB Corsair Drive and MojoPac was still extremely slow. Another problem was that some applications didn’t install correctly. I am not sure whether it was my USB stick or something else but it was there. Nonetheless if you check out the video below you will notice that it can run quite smoothly.
See MojoPac requirements here. Download free MojoPac version here.
3. FSuite
FSuite-CD - Here is something for Mac users only. FreeSMUG (FreeSoftware Mac User Group) released a collection CD with the most useful Free Open Source Software programs specifically packaged for Mac OSX. Even though there is no program launcher like in the above Portable Apps, you can easily create one yourself.
4. Live CDs
For Linux users there are plenty of options as well. Mackenzie already covered some of them in ‘Put your Linux Distro on a Live CD’. These Live CDs are full operating systems (i.e. Ubuntu) that can run completely from the portable medium.
If anyone is too lazy to install any of these packs, you can also choose to install individual programs which will run on your USB drive. Free Geekery has a wonderful list of things to do (http://www.rewardprograms.org/thefreegeek/features/how_to_make_your_usb_drive_into_a_digital_swiss_army_knife.html)
Thanks for the link, we got our own portable apps list as well:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/portable-software-usb/
And don’t forget your hacksaw!
I’d like to add: http://www.winpenpack.com/main/news.php
Interesting, but I prefer to keep as much of my computering life online, so I don’t need to carry anything around with me. I use iGoogle as my home page, Google Calendar for all my calendaring needs, Remember the Milk for to-do stuff, Google reader for feeds and Gmail for mail. If I ever need to write docs, i use (you guessed it) Google Docs.
Oh, and I managed to get an invite to the Dropbox beta (instant review: amazing), so I have all my important files available through my browser.
I don’t know. i am still not very comfortable to keeping sensitive data on third party servers.
i did a similar post on this the other day, but missed a few things here … i love the whole concept though.
http://www.knitwareblog.com/life-online-the-tao-of-doc-00210/
I like the general idea and have put Firefox Portable on my thumbdrive but cannot see how to copy or transfer the bookmarks on the pc Firefox to the thumbdrive Firefox.
Please keep in mind that I am just a clever user with a limited range of computer skills.
Thankx!
EASY…export your bookmark
go in mozilla, bookmarks and find organize bookmarks (it’s open a new window-then in file, select export). that’s it, in your usb version use the bookmark organizer to import them back
Or use Firefox extension called MozBackup. It works both with Firefox and Thudnerbird
If you got a PC, MoJo Pac is the best choice. Although a lot of programs are coming out with a portable version or a version you use online, so these are just temporary solutions.
I’ve been meaning to try Portable Apps Suite for awhile now thanks for reminding me.
Ceedo is also a good alternative, costs some $$ but from my experience much better than MojoPac
I would like to add Moka5 to the list. You can install multiple OS:s on it like Windows, Mac or Linux and run them from the USB drive, and install programs. You can also install customixed live pc:s , mybe run a Quake 2 pc or try the
OLPC
OS X portable applications are at this link:
http://osxportableapps.sourceforge.net/
FSuite CD doesn’t contain any OS X Portable Apps, but about 40 OS X Free & OpenSource applications to download with one click.
So just wondering, is it advisable to install and encryption app like truecrypt, then install the portableapps.com suite?
My parents just got me an 8 gig thumbdrive for xmas, so I’m thinking of securing it and stuff.
And, will the portable thunderbird sync with the thunderbird with my laptop? Like for instance I get new mail in my portable thunderbird, then when I stick in my thumbdrive it’ll sync to the laptop thunderbird?