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.