Carry your computer applications in your pocket

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A long-time friend/practicing attorney recently told me that she’ll never own a laptop, because then the expectation at her small firm of other family members would be that she’d work at home, as well as in the office.

With portable apps, the topic of this week’s article, she could seamlessly work from her office PC, her home desktop PC, a cyber café, or library. So, if the other members of her firm ever find out about portable apps, her slacker days might be over.

(There’s also the “remote desktop” option, such as GoToMyPC or LogMeIn, which aren’t free, although they are inexpensive — but that’s a topic for a different article). Portable Apps Defined

Directly from the Portableapps.com Web site, portable means “carried or moved with ease,” and app, short for application, is “a computer program like a Web browser or word processor.”

The site explains, “A portable app is a computer program that you can carry around with you on a portable device and use on any Windows computer. When your USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod or other portable device is plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. And when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind.”

It requires no special hardware and no additional software. Just download, run the portable installer, and go.

I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this yet: It’s a fully open-source and free platform. In my case, it took less than a minute to download Mozilla Thunderbird Portable and Mozilla FirefoxPortable. It took about two minutes to download the entire OpenOffice.org Suite Portable. I then installed them on my no-frills 4-Gig USB flash drive, which cost about $9 on sale at one of the local office supply chain stores. Installing them was incredibly simple and just a matter of clicking on “next.”

Now I can check my e-mail, surf the Web with my bookmarks, and work on a document with OpenOffice’s Writer with my flash drive from any computer other than mine. I can even do a little shopping, thanks to Roboform2Go, available at Roboform.com.

RoboForm2Go is a secure password manager and form filler. It will remember all your various URLs, user names and passwords, as well as your credit card info and info for registration forms. It’s stored on your USB and it attaches to the browser from outside. All your passwords are stored on the USB drive on what’s called “passcards” — not on the computer. All you have to do is remember one master password, which is encrypted, and it will remember all the others for you.

Roboform2Go is free, but you are limited to 10 passcards. A “pro” version is available for $29.99, with unlimited passcards. You can also save info to Roboform’s “SafeNotes.”

Security Tips

My friend might counter, “But Jane, what about security?” After all, one can be both a slacker and conscientious about confidentiality.

The cool thing about portable apps is — they leave nothing on the computer you’re using. Rather, the more pressing concern probably is that, because those flash drives are so small, they are easily forgotten at the library or cyber cafe, or lost in the black hole that is most women’s purses (mine!).

There are solutions for those scenarios, too, and, yes, they’re free or inexpensive.

With regard to e-mail, keep in mind that ThunderbirdPortable is password-protected; anyone who finds that USB won’t be able to read your downloaded e-mails unless he knows your password, just like he couldn’t turn on your desktop PC and see it unless he knows your desktop password. But, if you’re still nervous about using ThunderbirdPortable, there’s always the option of viewing your e-mails via Web mail, so it’s not downloaded anywhere. Rather, it stays on the server. Or, set up and use a Hushmail account for when you’re using someone else’s computer. With Hushmail, users need only create and remember their own passphrases. Hushmail is free for individual use, but you must use it with some regularity or the account will be de-activated.

For documents, there are a number of freeware downloads available at Download.com, such as Lock It Easy or FreeSecurity, that allow you to use encryption to secure your files on the USB. I didn’t find either program to be particularly idiot-proof, which is what I require. But maybe I didn’t spend enough time with either program, and you can get them to work.

Or, invest in a U3 smart drive, which is Microsoft-Windows compatible, purportedly very easy to use, and feature a “security lock.” This can be user-configured to require a password to be entered. In addition, the drive is supposed to seal itself after a certain number of invalid password entries, requiring a reformat. I found a SanDisk 4GB Cruzer Contour U3 USB2.0 Flash Drive for $22.95 with free shipping on Buy.com. Not much more than my cheapie version, and definitely worth it if it helps you sleep better at night.

Bottom line: My friend, and maybe you, ought to check out portable apps, because it’s an easy and cheap way to help you work more efficiently. So you’ll have more time and money for slacking.