TechgnosisWeb Prime

So, you’ve got one of those now-ubiquitous USB Flash keys. Maybe you’re lucky and it’s 256MB or higher.. or maybe someone gave you a basic 128MB one. Either way, you’re sitting there with your little tech-toy and wondering what to put on it. Well, you’re in luck! I have just the thing: the Portable Apps Suite. From the site:

Portable Apps Suite allows you to carry all your standard applications on a USB thumbdrive, iPod, portable hard drive or any other portable media. It contains a portable web browser, email client, web editor, office suite, word processor, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client and FTP client… all in one package, all preconfigured to work portably and be easy to back up. Just unzip it and you’re ready to go. You can then plug your portable device right into any Windows computer and use all of the applications just like you would on your own computer.

It’s a beautiful thing: You’ve got Firefox for your browsing, Thunderbird for your email, Sunbird for calendaring and tasks, Gaim for IM’ing, not to mention a web editor, text editor, FTP client, and a full-on office suite with spreadsheet, word processing, presentations, everything. And it’s all completely free. I just set up this suite on my little 256MB key and it works like a dream.

The only thing I’m adding to this is TrueCrypt: a free, Open Source on-the-fly encryption software. It can create a self-booting encrypted partition in the USB key, and you store the Portable App Suite inside the encrypted partition. That way, your documents, IM information, bookmarks and site passwords are all safe in case you lose the key or someone else gets a hold of it, and it’s dead easy to set up. It can even be set to auto-boot so it automatically pops up a password prompt when you plug in the key, making it even easier. Hugely reccomended, go check it out.