Setting up Your Portable Office
When traveling it is most important to have your browser and email client but to be prepared you may want a bit more. The next item you should throw into your USB office is Portable OpenOffice. This 74MB suite will require a larger USB drive than the other two programs, but you can still fit them all on a 128MB USB drive without any problems. Portable OpenOffice is not nearly as lightweight as Portable Firefox, but it will provide users with most of the comforts of home. Its definitely better than using Notepad to type documents, plus is gives you the functionality of the OOo suite.
OK, so we have office programs, email, and a browser... what other tools might we need? Searching for lightweight, no-install-needed programs does not turn up too many gems, but some can be found if you look. One great one is µTorrent, a super light BitTorrent client. Despite how tiny this program is, it is one of the best BitTorrent clients available for Windows. While downloading torrents is not necessarily the most popular activity to do on someone else's computer, it might be a good way to pass the time, or to find other portable applications.
Another great application that any admin will want with them is Putty. This Telnet and SSH client is very light and can be a real lifesaver if you need to check in on your server at a moments notice.
Since your USB flash drive is replacing a smart phone or PDA, it make sense to have a calender as well. Portable Sunbird does a nice job of providing users with a calender and organizer without taking up much space. It is not very powerful and cannot sync with other devices or programs, but its still way better than pen and paper!
The final inclusion in our portable USB office is a HTML editor. Portable Nvu is not the most robust editor, but it does a very good job and is a lot more powerful than the normal mobile version- a dangerous combination of Notepad and trial and error.
There are lots of other portable application out there waiting for you to stumble upon them, but there are my picks. Get yourself a 256MB USB flash drive (I get them free as gifts all the time) and you will be prepared to do some serious computing where ever you go.