Travelling With Portable Apps

I’ve recently been introduced to a very clever suite of applications called Portable Apps.

It’s basically a mini operating system that you can run on an Ipod, USB key or any external drive (I’m running my version on a 2 Gig USB key).

If you’re like me you probably get frustrated at the fact that every internet cafe or computer you use does not have the comfort and familiarity of your own settings and shortcuts.

Portable Apps allows you to run applications such as Firefox (with all your personal passwords, settings and plug ins) Mozilla Thunderbird for email and a host of other convenient little applications.

I’m currently experimenting with a setup I hope to use for web development on the fly:

• Firefox plugin - FireFTP
• Firefox plugin - Web Developer Toolbar
• Firefox plugin - Colorzilla
• Firefox plugin - Firebug
• Notepad + + for Code editing
• Gimp for image editing

I’m also running the XAMPP apache server setup on the usb key with several of the current sites I’m working on, So I can save and upload local copies as I go.

If anyone else out there is experimenting with a similar setup I’d love to hear your thoughts.