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We recently purchased three 1GB USB flash drives from Amazon for only $15 each. And they are VERY handy. You can backup any file on your computer onto them and then transfer it to another computer whether it be music, word documents, movies, or even programs. There is a new type of program sort of coming into existence - portable versions of open source programs. Basically, they’re popular open soucre programs like Firefox, Thunderbird, and Gaim optimized to run on ANY computer from a tiny USB flash drive.

PortableApps puts together some of the best there are, in large collection of popular open source programs to use on any computer with USB. (Just about all of the alternatives mentioned in the last post have portable versions.)

Once you install it onto the flash drive (it takes a little while) it runs from a sort of start menu interface from the windows taskbar, and allows you to open any of the programs installed and ready to use, or check your documents and file space. And it also allows you to add more of their portable apps from their website. I currently have 17 apps installed, and it doesn’t even take up half of my 1GB flash drive. Portable Apps rocks.

You can’t directly sync settings between, say, your computer’s firefox and Portable App’s, but you can customize the portableapps version to be just like it, and the same with Thunderbird, so you can essentially access your email and RSS Feeds from your usual interface, on any Windows PC.

This is amazing, and actually a great tool for students - if you need to work on a paper digital word document at school, you just drag it onto the flash drive from your computer, and plug it in at school. In Paris, incoming high school students will actually be given a flash drive next year pre-loaded with open source software.