I’ve recently had the pleasure of finding a new application that you can run on just about any portable storage device from a jump drive to your iPod and everything in between. Portable Apps is an application suite that you install on your device allowing you to run some of the more popular Open Source applications. Their basic installation give you Firefox for web browsing, Thunderbird as an e-mail client and then Open Office Suite giving you a fully functioning word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software.

You probably already have these applications or similar ones installed on your computer so why would you want them on your portable device? Well, in my case I do freelance work and wanted a way to have my business e-mail and projects with me on whatever computer I happened to be using at the time. Using portable apps I’m able to keep my e-mail and business contacts stored right on my jump drive. I don’t have to go through the hassle of loading up a webmail application or installing software on a computer to access my mail. I just plug in and I’m ready to go.

For those of you with a stricter corporate IT department this could be your way around their restrictions. It’s not going to open up a website or anything they have blocked but it could give you the ability to login to your favorite instant messaging software or bring your Firefox browser to work with you already pre-loaded with your favorite add-ons and plugins. Obviously you do this at your own risk.

Still in college, don’t have your own computer and the labs don’t have the software you need to finish that project? Rather than trying to get something installed on the lab computers you can check out the PortableApps website and download the open source equivalent of what you need. The best part of this entire process is it’s all 100% free! Who doesn’t like free?

We’d love to hear how you have been able to use PortableApps to make your daily life a little easier, just leave us a comment.

Filed under: Software, apps, jumpdrive, portable