Turn your USB Flash Drive into a Portable Computer

The USB Flash Drive is the new floppy disk and it has been for some time. Often you find that floppy disk drives don't even come with computers anymore. The USB Flash Drive however can be much more than just storage media. You can effectively take a mini computer around with you.

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Computing on the Move

Most people who work on more than one computer on the same project have a USB Flash Drive. Replacing the floppy disk the USB Flash Drive also called a Pen Drive or USB Key is a storage media. Files can be taken from one computer directly to another and worked on just like any other storage media. The USB Flash Drive however has advantages over other types of removable storage. It can be high capacity and very small at the same time. This gives the USB Drive more uses than simple storage. What if you could take your entire computer with you on this drive.

We are not talking physically of course that would just be silly. But you can everything that makes the computers yours with you. When you take your saved files with you to another computer you then will have to load up the software that you use and open the file off the Flash Drive. But what if the computer you are at doesn't have the same software that you use? Sure most basic tools like word processing can open many file types. Will it still be formatted the same though? Will you be able to work as fast on software that you are not used to? Unlikely, you need a better solution.

It goes further than just files though. What about the internet? You are browsing the internet at home and find sites that are very useful to you and save them in your favourites. You then use a different computer it of course has a different favourites list that's if it has one at all. Its easy enough to copy your favourites folder to your USB Flash Drive and take that with you, that's still a bit of a pain to do every time. Also you have to update your favourites on your flash drive every time you change them if you want to keep them up to date. There is a solution better than this. How about take your entire internet browser with you. Load it up from the USB Flash drive it has all of your recent site history all of your favourites and settings ready for you just the way you had them at home.

It gets better. You can take calendars and schedules, FTP clients, office products and e-mail clients with you. This guide will take you through all of these uses and show you where to get them from. The best news is that most of this portable software is completely free to use. So turn your USB Flash Drive into a portable computer.