Travel Without the Laptop, Carry Your Computer on a USB Drive

Laptop computers are shedding weight but they still weigh a few pounds and carrying them around on the shoulders is often very inconvenient.

Do you really need that notebook wherever you go? Not always.

For instance, you are traveling for a business conference or an Internet café or a friend’s place that will definitely have spare computers but you need to carry the laptop just because it contains all your software programs, application settings and personal data (like docs, photos, music, videos, etc).

Are you are in a similar situation? If yes, it’s time to give your shoulders some rest – leave that laptop at home and just switch to a USB Flash Drive (or an iPod or any other removable disk).

We generally use USB drives to transfer documents and presentations across computers but these key chains can also be used for carrying software programs and other files. Here are some resources to help your turn that USB drive into a personal computer.

PortableApps – This is a excellent collection of useful programs like Firefox (for web browsing), OpenOffice (like Microsoft Office), Pidgin (for chat) and GIMP (for photo editing) designed to run from any removable disk without installation. PortableApps also includes VLC Media Player that can virtually play all multimedia file formats.

Do checkout some other wonderful sites like portablefreeware.com and tinyapps.org for downloading apps that can run off your USB drive.