I’m preparing for a possible business trip, and part of that means getting ready to live off of other people’s computers. I’m building a new thumb drive, loading it with updated software and tools. Here’s what I am up to.
Resources
I first headed to PortableApps.com, and download some goodies. The website is home to a great many open source programs that have been re-tooled to run when unzipped — there is no need to install them onto the computer themselves. That makes them ideal for running off of a USB drive. I’ll talk about what I downloaded in a minute.
I then headed over to Daily Cup of Tech, to read up some more on tweaking thumb drives to their max, and to look for some geekier downloads. The DCoT guys have written a lot about thumb drive-based software, and about living your life off of a thumb drive. And they are ?ber geeky.
And the thumb drive itself?? I got it from Tigerdirect.? 8GB, for less than $100.? Huge.
Why a thumb drive?
When I travel, I am generally at the mercy of others for computer time. And, worse, I am often on machines that are locked down – I can’t add software or make a whole lot of changes. So, I need to be able to take my computer-me with me, without relying on the ability to change the computer on which I am working. Thus, living from a thumb drive.
It’s small enough, so that I can carry it with me when, say, a portable hard drive would be impractical. I can safeguard it, when I might otherwise worry about bumping a portable hard drive. And these days, it has enough storage space to allow me to do what I want and need to do, without being too much.
I need to be able to get me email. I need my address book, and email addresses. I need to be able to surf the web, and have my bookmarks. I need Photoshop, or something like it, in order to adjust and tweak digital photos. I need an anti-virus capability — it’s an ugly world out there. I need a way to read PDF files. I’d like to have instant messaging. I’d like a decent FTP capability, in case I end up doing things with this website. I’d like options other than using MS Office (because when do you run across a PC that doesn’t have Word and Excel and / or Office?) I’d like to have Skype. And I need a way to watch videos and to listen to music.
The Programs
Let’s start with the simple one.
Firefox. I am a Firefox user. Show me a computer without it, and I’ll ask if you want it installed. Good browser, good RSS integration, and tons of neat things that can be added onto it as a plug-in (which is one of the beauties of open source software). I love the integrated search function, too — there’s a spot reserved in the top right corner, just ready for you to drop in some words for a search via Google or other places (I’m a Boolean guy – that appeals to me).
Thunderbird. It’s an open source mail program, that does all of the basics very well: POP3, address book, email filters, etc. Added bonus is that it is open source, and, like Firefox, has a ton of plug-ins to give it additional features. I like that it can be rigged to go get my Hotmail and Yahoo mail — accounts that I seldom use or check, but that are tied to things like PayPal and eBay (and which have had problems before). There are also some good encryption plug-ins for encrypting your email.
Clamwin. It’s a portable anti-virus program. It’s not that I run into a lot of machines that don’t have anti-virus programs on them, I just run into some that have out of date programs or ones that I know aren’t as effective or as efficient as they should be. And, since I am living out of my thumb drive, I can’t afford to have it get infected.
GAIM. It has a new version and a new name (Pidgen), but this is the simple version that runs from a thumb drive. It’s an all-in-one instant messaging program, and will connect to Yahoo, AOL / AIM, Microsoft, and (I think) even Google Talk. All in one small little package. I’ll be adding some basic encryption packages onto it — it has a lot of plug-ins, too.
GIMP. It’s Photoshop, but open source. Great and powerful program, with great documentation to boot. Photoshop / GIMP are one of those things — once you pick up some basic skills, you can’t imagine not having the program or being able to do those things. Rotate images. Resize things. Tinker with colors, or hues, or the DPI.
OpenOffice. Think Microsoft Office, only open source, free, and less annoying (by far). It’s behind some on the features of the full Office suite, but it has all of the basics one will need.
PortableSkype. I have not tried this one yet. I am most curious. Voice Over IP, running from a thumb drive. I guess I’ll bring along my headset with microphone, too. I’ll probably be a decent way to chat with the wife and kids while I am on the road, if we have enough bandwidth.
Sumatra. It’s a small, open source program for reading PDF files. Adobe Reader is nice, but it’s huge, and if it’s not already installed on the computer, you’re usually screwed. PDF’s are so common these days, that I can’t imagine not being able to read them if I need to.
VLC. My favorite. It’s the garbage disposal of media players. It plays music CD’s. It plays DVD’s. It plays MP3′s. It plays videos in just about any format, from QuickTime to DivX. Open source, and finely tunes, it’s awesome.
7Zip. It’s the jack-of-all-trades compression/decompression utility. It can handle just about any format, from .zip to .sit to .rar — awesome utility to have when on the go.
