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What to do with your USB flash drive: Run portable apps

What's more portable than a laptop, tablet, or smartphone? Answer: A USB flash drive. We'll show you how to run applications like Firefox, Chrome, OpenOffice, and more, with just your USB flash drive and a host computer.

Ed Rhee

Ed Rhee, a freelance writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area, is an IT veteran turned stay-at-home-dad of two girls. He focuses on Android devices and applications while maintaining a review blog at techdadreview.com.

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Ed Rhee

July 21, 2011 10:48 a.m. PT

2 min read

What's more portable than a laptop, tablet, or smartphone? Answer: A USB flash drive. If you want easy access to applications like Firefox, Chrome, OpenOffice, and more, all you need is your USB flash drive and a host computer.

In part five of our "What to do with your USB flash drive" series, we'll show you how to install portable apps onto your USB flash drive.

Step 1: Download the PortableApps 2.0 PR1.1 platform from PortableApps.com.

Step 2: Insert a USB flash drive into your computer and double-click on the downloaded file, PortableApps.com_Platform_Setup_2.0_Pre-Release_1.1.exe, to start the installation.

Step 3: At the "destination folder" section of the install, enter the drive letter of your USB flash drive, then click the Install button.

Step 4: Click the Finish button to end the installation and launch the PortableApps.com Platform.

Step 5: When the PortableApps menu appears, select Manage Apps, then Get More Apps.

Step 6: Select the apps you want to install on your USB flash drive then click the Next button.

Step 7: Once all your apps are installed, you'll see a list of them in the PortableApps menu.

PortableApps full menu — Screenshot by Ed Rhee

That's it. The next time you insert your PortableApps USB flash drive into a computer, the apps menu will automatically pop up. If it doesn't, you can just browse to the USB flash drive and double-click on Start.exe.

You can browse the Internet with Firefox or Chrome, scan the computer for viruses with ClamWin, work on documents with OpenOffice, and a whole lot more. The best part is, everything is stored on the USB flash drive so no trace is left behind on the host computer!