More about the USB drive as a computer
I have made several posts about putting your computer on a USB drive and my SeniorNet colleague Sol Libes has been giving talks on the subject. One of my favorite newsletters, Tech Support Alert, has an editorial by “Gizmo” Richards on his experience with the USB drive as a portable computer. He writes:
I’m absolutely delighted with my new laptop replacement. It’s way lighter than my old IBM ThinkPad T42 and at $49 it’s a tad cheaper as well.
The laptop replacement is a USB flash drive. The drive was an answer to a conundrum I faced last month. I planned to take a two week break part of which involved camping in the desert. The desert I figured was no place for my IBM. Yet both before and after the camping segment I would be in cities where I would need access to a computer.
Taking a USB thumb drive seemed like a sensible solution. As it turned out it was not only sensible but practical. So practical I’m wondering whether I ever need to travel with a laptop again.
While traveling I was able to do all my normal work using most of my normal tools. The tools were on my USB drive. What was different was that I was plugged into someone else’s computer at an internet cafe or hotel.
I put quite a lot of thought into the programs I loaded onto the USB drive before I left.
Most important was a portable version of Firefox along with TorPark, a special version of Firefox setup to work with the Tor anonymizing service. Both these run entirely from the USB drive and leave no trace of my surfing on the host PC. That’s nice but more important was the availability of my normal bookmarks, Firefox extensions, custom bookmarks toolbar, Google toolbar and even my surfing history from within Portable Firefox. This was made possible simply by copying parts of my Firefox profile from my laptop to the USB drive before I left home.
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