U3: Portable Support

An advertisement in PC Mag prompted me to check the U3.com website. The portability of major apps looks like an answer to the problem of using unsecure public PCs while on the road.

Best Buy had a 1 gb U3 USB for about $90, so I decided to try this approach.

So far, I've loaded some free software:

• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• IrfanView (with plugins)

I also have loaded the trial version of ThinkFree. This provides MS Office-like support. A few trials confirm that the ThinkFree apps are very similar to the Office apps.

There are some additional things to be added since this should be a relatively complete set of needed key software.

The only problems are the slow start-up of the apps and what appears to be a system hang when using the Mcafee virus checker.

The Blogger begins

It's time for a public blog. The motivations are the need for communicating widely and as a place to keep notes for those curious.

The travel countdown is now three-weeks plus. The venue will be Thailand, and a bit of the surrounding area. It will be a two and a half month trip with some demanding objective, some academic and some physical.

Preparations include building support systems for computing-intensive activities and (what might be) massive digital photography.

Thoughts, planning, implementation and actual experiences will be the subjects of subsequent posts.