Roboform2go - The USB ‘killer app’?

I admit it, I have dozens of USB pen drives, thumb drives, whatever you want to call them.

I get them organized, then forget what I have on them. I have highly specialized ones (like the IronKey) and lots of small generic ones. They can be found in the bottom of my laptop bag, or scattered around my desk. None of them really have any particular value - until now.

Once I moved Roboform onto a 4GB USB, with Roboform2go, I found I always wanted that one USB with me. Anybody who has taken the minimal effort to get Roboform up and running knows just how valuable this program is. I’m a big fan of open-source, but there’s nothing out there that can hold a candle to this program. For $40, I could put it on my USB stick and take it anywhere I go. But a USB that I just HAD to have, that only had Roboform2Go on it, seemed like a waste.

So I added Portable Apps (which I’d played with many times before), and placed some of my other favorite tools on the same USB.

I have Portable Apps on a few different USBs. The idea of running Mozilla, or Thunderbird from a USB if I don’t have to, gives me hives. With Roboform2Go, and Del.Iciou.us to handle all my bookmarking, I can work with any browser anywhere, for most basic stuff. I still left Mozilla portable on the USB, for the rare occasion that I might actually need it.

I used the open-source Password Safe for all the passwords that Roboform2Go doesn’t keep for me. I put Action Outline on there as a simple, easy to use action item list, which I’m currently trying to use with David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Action Outline is a great little list manager that I’ve used for years. I paid the $30 bucks back then, I think it’s around $40 now for the pro version with unlimited lists. There’s a free program called Task Coach, which has been made portable, and does much of the same. But I’m happy with my existing program.

I also installed the Notepad++ Portable version, from the Portable Apps site. It drives me crazy not to have a decent text editor. I also need a spell checker, so I grabbed the Aspell spell checker which is easily integrated with Notepad++. I probably should have made the effort to use a more up-to-date spell checker, like Hunspell, but this was quick and easy.

I next added Skype, and made it portable using the directions from Gruups.com. There are a lot of discussions about how to make Skype portable out there. This is about as basic as it gets and works great.

Finally I added 7-zip portable for those occasions when I’m on a machine that is so crippled it can’t unzip/unrar/untar etc.

I found a nice little free Autorun utility, called AutoRunPRO, that will let you start more than one program when you first stick the USB in your computer. I can start Roboform, Password Safe, Portable Apps, and Action Outline. It works great.

Everything together take less than 200MB on my 4GB stick. This is the real deal. I’m addicted, I don’t go anywhere without it!

If you haven’t tried making your life portable - you might want to give it a try.