USB flash drives may be the sneakernet of the 21st Century, but with a little open source software, you can carry a veritable arsenal of tools in your pocket.
The USB port has become a ubiquitous interface in all modern personal computers. Unless your PC harkens back to the Stone Age, if you have a USB cable or a thumb drive, you should be able to interface with virtually any computer and transfer data. USB drives have also become incredibly cheap, and with multi-gigabyte devices costing less than $100 nowadays, every geek should have one in their “murse” (that’s short for what my wife calls my “man purse,” my trademark gadget bag).
But are you really taking advantage of USB? USB ports and thumb drives can do far more than act as advanced sneakernet devices. Here’s a few tips to make you the literal Felix the Cat of your USB domain.
Running Applications from USB Drives
A USB drive is great for storing data, but did you know you can run applications directly from it? If you work in an environment where you’re not allowed to install applications on your PC, or if you’re frequently on the road and don’t always carry your own personal laptop with you, or if you just want to be able to carry your entire productivity environment with you wherever you go, consider the PortableApps Suite, a collection of well-known, open source applications for Windows. It’s likely that you already run the applications in the Suite on your Linux desktop; but PortableApps gives you the convenience of running the same applications on anyone’s PC, without disrupting the machine or leaving a trace of…
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