I’d like to introduce, for those who haven’t already seen it, a way to take some of your favorite applications with you wherever you go. “PortableApps”:http://portableapps.com/ sports a numbers of applications that you can save onto your flash drive and use on any computer. In my case I work in an office where I have no administrator rights whatsoever on my computer, and so I have been deprived of my Firefox browser since I started working here in mid-December. PortableApps provides the solution to this problem with “Portable Firefox”:http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/browsers/portable_firefox, allowing me to run Firefox because it doesn’t actually install on my computer so it doesn’t need to muck with the registry settings or network restrictions. I simply opened the .zip file, extraced the folders to my desktop, and voila! Instant Firefox! And when I get Internet access at home again, all I have to do is save the Portable Firefox folders to CD and take it with me to keep any changes I make to my configuration.
I also have “Portable Thunderbird”:http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/email/portable_thunderbird for keeping up with my RSS feeds and “Portable GAIM”:http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/chat/portable_gaim in the event that I want to load it for a moment when I get some free time and see who’s online.
I don’t have a flash drive but finding this site makes me now wish I had one. Props to a buddy of mine who dropped in last night for pointing me toward this!