For Christmas my lovely wife bought me a nice titanium 2GB thumb drive to carry my work around with me. It came with some annoying backup sync software that I promptly removed. After putting everything I could think of on the drive I was maybe 10% full. Wondering what I should do with all the extra space, I came across PortableApps.com.

The PortableApps.com suite is basically a menu system that loads specially formatted portable software versions. These portable versions do not need to be installed on the computer you plug the thumb drive into- you run them directly from the USB stick. They are completely self contained, leaving no trace of the application or personal data on the computer you use them on.

There are three versions of the suite- standard, basic, and lite:

PortableApps Suite (Standard Edition): ClamWin Portable (antivirus), Mozilla Firefox - Portable Edition (web browser), Gaim Portable (instant messaging), OpenOffice.org Portable (office suite), Sudoku Portable (puzzle game), Mozilla Sunbird - Portable Edition (calendar/task manager) and Mozilla Thunderbird - Portable Edition (email client) and runs comfortably from a 512MB drive.

PortableApps Suite (Lite Edition): Uses AbiWord Portable (word processor) instead of OpenOffice.org Portable and runs comfortably from a 256MB drive.

PortableApps Suite (Base Edition): If you’d like to pick and choose exactly which apps to include, you can try Portable Apps Suite (Base Edition). This is a stripped down package with just the PortableApps Menu, PortableApps Backup utility and custom folders, icons and autorun. It’s less than 1MB installed, so it’s a great option for smaller drives.

In addition to the suite packages, there are a number of handy programs you can install listed on their site. Being a web developer I installed the following to allow me to administer and work on Secure Delivery from anywhere:

WinMerge - File comparison
WinSCP - Windows SCP Client
Putty Portable - Portable version of the SSH / telnet Client
7zip Portable - free 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, RAR archive tool
Pidgin Portable - Instant Message client (I’m not a big fan of the standard Gaim included with PortableApps so I removed it)
KompoZer Portable - A light web editor
Firefox Beta 3 - Installs along side the standard Firefox 2 so you can try both.
KeePass - A handy password locker for keeping all your logins straight.

With the above additions I’ve basically created a portable environment where I can respond to a customer support email from anywhere, log in with FTP or SSH, compare two files, download and extract a patch, and fix a bug. Add to that a full featured word processor, your own browser (with your own extensions and theme) and I really don’t know how I was able to deal without it.

I’d recommend PortableApps.com to anyone- its free, its incredibly useful, and it’s “no trace left behind” privacy might keep you from getting fired from work while working on your killer app :)