Last week, I bought a Kingston 1GB USB 2.0 flash drive. I didn’t need it, but it was on sale for $17. I think it’ll prove to be a worthwhile purchase.
So far, I’m using it for portable apps, a digital inbox (random files I’ll capture, process, and organize later), and a private blog to mess around with.
I’m doing my best to make sure the programs I choose don’t write to the flash drive intensively. (I’d hate for it to only live for a year, even though it has a five-year warranty.) I’m pretty confident John T. Haller’s PortableApps are optimized for the least amount of disk writes. I got a bunch of others from PortableFreeware, too. So far, the gripe I have is that opening apps seem a bit slower than I think they should. (Mainly Thunderbird, Firefox, and Gaim.) Maybe it’s in my head, but anyway, if speed is what you want, don’t go cheap.
For simple file transport, it’s all good. Since I’m still a college student, I’ll finally be able to take huge files around with me and not have to email them to myself.
I just read Podz’s tutorial, “Putting WordPress on a USB stick“, and now I have a blog is housing more private thoughts and aspirations.
I think I’d like a portable RSS news reader, but haven’t found yet. I’m currently using Bloglines.
Any other ideas? It doesn’t matter how far fetched you think it sounds, it just might be the next big idea!
