Comments on: Must have programs for a USB card

Question: Must have programs for a USB card

nosophoros — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 16:35:32 -0800

I'm looking for programs that are able to be stored on a USB memory stick that will allow me to run them off the stick and stay on top of things wherever I am. Anyone point me in the right direction?

I already have my daily planner and firefox on the card. What I'm really looking for is a word processsor and perhaps a linux OS? Or really just any good productivity tool

By: Nelson

Nelson — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 16:46:53 -0800

Try portablefreeware.com.

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 16:52:10 -0800

Also try tinyapps.org.

By: Four Flavors

Four Flavors — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 16:52:57 -0800

Additonally, see here.

By: geeky

geeky — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 17:10:20 -0800

I'm assuming that since you can boot Knoppix from CD, if you have a large enough USB memory stick you can probably boot it from that too.

By: blag

blag — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 17:26:27 -0800

It's late and I can't be bothered finding URLs for all of these, sorry. Essential apps on my USB stick:

AbiWord
Portable firefox, thunderbird and NVU
A TiddlyWiki
CDex
FileZilla
Lupas Rename
Miranda IM
Foxit PDF Reader
Simple File Shredder
Star Downloader
Undelete
Unstoppable Copier
Webalizer
wget
WinRAR
xmplay
Asterisk Logger
BareGrep
EditPad
Putty
SciTE
VNC Viewer
QM
SpaceMonger
A zip file containing company logos, fonts, letterheads, templates etc.
A full installation of DamnSmallLinux, bootable and with Qemu so it can be run from inside Windows

By: sourwookie

sourwookie — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 17:39:17 -0800

What day planner did you use? The only one I saw, Chaos Manager, is over 1 Meg (unless installed it occupies less space than the download).

By: matildaben

matildaben — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 17:54:22 -0800

here
or just look at what people have entered on del.icio.us

By: signal

signal — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 18:10:00 -0800

A full fledged CMS, including Apache, PHP, ImageMagick and MySQL.

By: signal

signal — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 18:10:19 -0800

And Typo3, of course. That's the CMS part.

By: ph00dz

ph00dz — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 18:42:52 -0800

Yeah... you can run Damn Small Linux if you want a full, virtual machine type environment, bootable in either windows or linux, right from the usb drive. It uses qemu, for whatever it's worth... and it actually is pretty darn cool, if you're looking for something to experiment with.

It also makes for a pretty nifty bootable usb drive in an emergency... that is, if your machine can support that kind of thing.

By: rjt

rjt — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 18:55:29 -0800

Things I use now, or have used in the past...

admin:
- putty and pscp
- wget
- tightvnc
- winscp
- metapad
- winmerge

internet:
- portable firefox
- portable thunderbird
- trillian
- skype [setup.exe]
- still haven't found an rss reader i'm happy with which runs off a usb key (looking into GreatNews at the moment)

productivity:
- abiword 2.0 (later versions need .dll's and such rather than just the bare .exe)
- foxit pdf-reader
- pdf creator [setup.exe]
- microsoft's word/excel/powerpoint viewers [setup.exe]
- openoffice [setup.exe]

audio:
- cdex
- audacity

graphics:
- irfanview
- photo brush is a nice photo touch-up tool which (at least used to) run from a usb drive
- noiseware community edition
- paint shop pro (and animation shop) [setup.exe]

video:
- virtualdub and the excellent deshaker filter

multimedia:
- k-lite codec pack (full version, not mega) [setup.exe]
- media player classic
- winamp

misc:
- winrar
- deepburner [setup.exe]

and because public access pieces are always a real mess, various security and system maintenance tools:
- hijackthis and cwshredder
- adaware and spybot
- stinger
- mcafee's command-line scanner
- norton windoctor
- crap cleaner is a very good, very conservative registry cleaner
- various tools from sysinternals.com

I don't use web-design apps, or any kind of personal information manager.

By: Chunder

Chunder — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 04:01:47 -0800

Although it may be slightly at a tangent to what you want it for, there's a U3 smart drive thing which will enable the same kind of functionality - i.e. programs reside on USB, and do not need to install on the host machine.

A lot of the things already mentioned are good, but they sound like they need to be installed onto the machine into which you insert the USB stick - just like if you were to burn the application setup files to a CD, and carry it around.

It all depends on what you're actually expecting to do with these applications, and whether you'll be at liberty to install things...

Just like having an Amiga again, after all these years. Strange how things come around...

By: blag

blag — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 15:51:45 -0800

Chunder: all of the apps on my list can be run directly from the USB stick. rjt's far more comprehensive list includes some that need installing but he's marked these with [setup.exe]

By: rjt

rjt — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 18:37:29 -0800

Just found portable openoffice as well, but I'd still recommend keeping abiword and the office viewers around as OOo can be pretty resource intensive and there's no guarantee that a public pc will up to the job of running a fully-featured suite.

By: tke248

tke248 — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 05:29:32 -0800

I made a page with my favorites with links, working on a torrent

By: tke248

tke248 — Tue, 19 Jul 2005 05:31:19 -0800

Forgot to put in the description of the url: http://www.combobulate.com/usbutils.htm

By: JBell

JBell — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 17:26:19 -0800

I use KeePass & EPIM (both are freeware) everyday!

By: deusdiabolus

deusdiabolus — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 05:33:32 -0800

In the event that you actually need/want a browser that is IE-based (but much safer and more configurable), Maxthon can be configured to run quite nicely from a small USB key. You could probably put it and Firefox on the same key, in fact.

By: Gunderstorm

Gunderstorm — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 14:02:25 -0800

MUST have: Password Safe