Setting Up Your USB Storage Device as a Portable Application Library - More Useful Portable Apps

This chapter is optional but you shouldn't skip it. Here I'll give a list of portable applications that are very useful in certain situations but not on an everyday basis for the average user. They tend to be very small, so they won't occupy a lot of space. It's better to have them on your flash drive than regret not having them later on.

• Torrent client: "µTorrent" - download link. The latest standalone client is 170kB.
• SSH and Telnet client: "Putty Portable" - download link.
• FTP Client & Server: "FileZilla" - download link; "Quick 'n' Easy FTP Server" - link.
• Web Editor: "NVU Portable" - download link.
• Windows Registry Backup/Recovery Tool: "ERUNT" - download link.
• Password Management: "Password Safe" - download link; "KeePass Safe" - link.
• Firewall: "FirewallPAPI" - download link. An open source firewall for Windows.
• File De-/Encryption: "Remora USB Disk Guard" - download link.
• HEX Viewer & Editor: "Hexplorer" - download link.
• Web Server (Apache, MySQL, PHP): "Webserver on Stick" (WOS) - download link.
• Programming & Development: "Portable Dev-C++ IDE" - download link; "wxDev-C++" as an extension for aforementioned 'Dev-C++' - download link; "Portable Python" is a very powerful portable programming environment for Python® coding - download link. Happy portable coding from your USB key!
• Benchmarking and System Information Utilities: "CPU-Z" - download link; "Memtest86+" - download link; "SuperPI mod 1.5" - download link; "wPrime" - download link; "AIDA32" - download link.
• Bootable Operating Systems: "Mac-on-stick" - download link; "Windows in Your Pocket" - download link; "Damn Small Linux aka DSL" - download link; "PuppyLinux" - download link; "BartPE Builder" - download link.
• Distributed Computing: "Folding@Home" - download link à join our DevFolding team - team number: 12912. Fold to cure! Thanks.
• Download Manager: "Speedy" - download link; "Flashget Portable" - download link.

Add your chosen applications to your tray application launcher and enjoy!

Check out the screen-shot below of my Kingston 1GB flash drive hooked up with all of my portable applications. I have everything that I could think of. As you can see I still have 619MB free space; therefore I barely use ~1/3 of its capacity.

Final Words

By now you should have a very powerful and complete portable application library. There are thousands of other portable apps, many of which I am not even aware of, so chances are that you're going to find a lot of useful ones too. Feel free to drop by and let us know over at the DevHardware Forums. We'll truly appreciate it.

My last piece of advice is that you shouldn't forget your USB flash drive at home. Remind yourself once or twice until you develop the habit. You're going to save a lot of precious time by having everything ready and portable. You'll also find yourself saving your friends' time; if they need some specific software, you'll have an alternate application available on your flash drive. Just plug it in and enjoy.

Have fun and use your flash drive frequently; you'll benefit greatly from getting the most out of it. Decades ago people would pay millions to get a drive that had this much storage. Why waste it now? Why let it get dusty on a shelf? It makes no sense!