I read about a really cool website on Slashdot today, and I think it could be a helpful trick for a lot of people. The URL is:
http://portableapps.com/
It contains links to download some major programs that have been rewritten and designed to run off of a USB Key Drive. I already put OpenOffice, Gaim, and Firefox on mine; it's perfect for someone like me who works in an environment where we are not permitted to install software onto our own work computer. But I think it could be really nice for a lot of other reasons. You could use portable Firefox and portable Thunderbird on any computer you go to, with all of your bookmarks and preferences and so on right there, ready to go. If you start googling around for similar websites you can find all sorts of portable programs that are great, like quick image manipulators, Word Document to PDF converters, etc. Just make sure you use a program that's supposed to be run on a key drive, or else it may use a folder on your jump drive as a cache or other temp folder, and quickly burn it out with too many re-writes. In some ways this is better than a Linux live CD, but it'll never replace it for me. If anyone finds any other cool, portable USB Key programs, let me know!
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