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Fri, 2006-10-13, 17:12 PDT (-0700)
With USB flash drives rapidly going up in capacity while dropping in price (a while ago I got a Lexar 128MB flash drive for roughly $50, last week I got a Memorex 1GB flash drive for $17.99) it is not surprising that usage of the device has become more widespread. A lot of people I know now own at least one flash drive and when I started looking around for useful tools and utilities that could be run from a flash drive I was amazed at just how much stuff people have come up with that can run from a USB flash drive - from dinky little tools and utilities to full-fledged office applications to Operating Systems (OSes) such as various distributions of Linux.
The big advantage of having such applications on a flash drive and having them able to run directly from the flash drive without requiring installation to the host machine is the fact that one can now take their favorite tools and applications with them and run them wherever there is a computer. One could theoretically go to someone else's computer, plug in the USB drive and have full access to one's favorite tools, applications, even your preferred Linux distribution. When you are done using the computer, just unplug the flash drive and you are done. You do not leave behind a mess on the host machine because you did not have to install any applications on the host.
Here are just a few of the cool (and free) tools and utilities that I have found which can be installed and can run from a flash drive:
- Linux distributions:
- Damn Small Linux (DSL): Have tried it already and it works like a charm. One can even have it run natively by booting from the flash drive once you have it installed, or run it embedded inside a virtual machine on top of the host machine's current OS.
- Puppy Linux: Haven't tried this one yet but this one looks to be similar in usage to Damn Small Linux.
- PortableApps.com: This site hosts portable versions of popular and useful software such as Firefox (web browser), Thunderbird (email client), OpenOffice.org (office suite which includes a fully functional spreadsheet, word processor and database), GIMP (image manipulation utility) and much more.
- Foxit PDF Reader: Viewer for PDF files that is a single executable. Just copy it onto the USB flash drive and run it from there.
- Deep Burner: Software for burning CDs and DVDs.
- MyUninstaller: An altogether more informative version of the Add/Remove Programs applet of Windows.
- SIW - System Information for Windows: Very informative utility for finding out more about how your computer is setup.
- XMPlay: Audio player that supports many audio file formats.
- XnView: Free graphic and photo viewer.
- i.Ftp: Small graphical FTP client.
- CDex: Tool for extracting and converting audio files.
- Baregrep: File finding and text searching tool.
- Roadkil's Unstoppable Copier: Tool for recovering files from damaged disks.
- Metapad: A replacement for Microsoft Notepad.
- Media Player Classic: A lightweight multimedia player that is reminiscent of Windows Media Player 6.4.
- IrfanView: Fast, small graphic viewer.
- HijackThis: Tool for detecting possible spyware infections.
- Lupas Rename: Tool for doing batch renaming of files.
- SciTE: Text editor with facilities for programming.
- WinMerge: Utility for comparing text files.
- VirtualDub: Tool for processing and converting video files.
- freeCommander: freeware file manager.
Here are some lists that other people have put up of tools and utilities which can run from a USB flash drive:
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