Digital Solecism

A lot of USB Flash Drives these days are coming with a built in application launcher called U3. Many many people out there dislike it, and those who know how tend to immediately remove it as soon as they get the drive home.

But why do so many people hate it?
I would say generally because it does nothing out of the box. It is just a useless app that confuses people. U3 was marketed horribly (i.e. not at all) and there is no way for people to know what it is capable.

If you haven’t done it before, go check out www.portableapps.com - it is a fantastic site full of all sorts of free applications you can throw onto your Flash Drive and then run directly from it no matter where you are. How about an Instant Messenger and Web Browser that run directly from the flash drive and keep all their cache and logs right on it instead of on your work computer?

They have a bunch of applications they host themselves, as well as links to tons of them you can get elsewhere. But they’ve released something fantastic lately, a complete suite to install to your Flash Drive. It is less than 90mb in size and includes a plethora of useful apps you can bring with you anywhere you go. These include:

• ClamWin Portable (antivirus)
• Mozilla Firefox - Portable Edition (web browser)
• Gaim Portable (instant messaging)
• OpenOffice.org Portable (office suite)
• Sudoku Portable (puzzle game)
• Mozilla Sunbird - Portable Edition (calendar/task manager)
• Mozilla Thunderbird - Portable Edition (email client) and runs comfortably from a 512MB drive

Not too bad for something that only takes up a small portion of the space on your Flash Drive. (You did order that one for $1.95 I posted the other day, right?) This leaves plenty of other space on the drive for more apps and anything else you normally want to carry with you.

Take it to work or school and keep all your personal information reasonably private.

All for the low low price of… FREE. Can’t really complain about that.

For reference, here’s a list of programs they host on their own site:

• 7-Zip Portable
• AbiWord Portable
• Audacity Portable
• ClamWin Portable
• Command Prompt Portable
• FileZilla Portable
• GIMP Portable
• KeePass Portable
• Miranda IM Portable
• Mines-Perfect Portable
• Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition
• Mozilla Sunbird, Portable Edition
• Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition
• Notepad++ Portable
• Nvu Portable & KompoZer Portable
• On-Screen Keyboard Portable
• OpenOffice.org Portable
• Pidgin Portable
• PokerTH Portable
• PuTTY Portable
• Sudoku Portable
• Sumatra PDF Portable
• Virtual Magnifying Glass Portable
• VLC Media Player Portable
• winMd5Sum Portable

Head on over and check it out. You can also check out www.u3applications.net for more applications, including CC Cleaner and a few others.

So next time you pick up a new Flash Drive.. don’t be TOO quick to dump U3. It isn’t that bad once you whip it into shape.

(BTW, if you still really hate U3.. you can uninstall it by going here.)

Popularity: 22% [?]