Run your office from a portable device

A security warning is in order, however. Once you’ve installed Openoffice.org, you need to ensure you use it to open your Office documents. Right-click on the document, select ‘open with’ and select Openoffice.org from your removable drive. If you double-click on an Office document on the host computer, it will usually launch within the installed Office-compatible software.

As Word and other similar tools can auto-save an open document, you may leave a trace of your work on the host computer if you don’t open within your portable version of Openoffice.org.

When you write a document, spreadsheet or presentation within Openoffice, use the correct ‘Save as’ option, accessible from within Microsoft Office, so other users can open the document without ever knowing you created it in an alternative office suite.

Mozilla Firefox 2 Portable Edition
Although Firefox 3 is due soon (it’s currently at Release Candidate stage - check www.pcw.co.uk/downloads for the portable edition), we’ve included the portable version of Firefox 2 on your disc. This free web browser is popular with third-party developers so there is a wide range of free add-ons to extend its uses. We’ve included a selection of Firefox add-ons on the disc.

Install Firefox to your portable drive and it’s completely self-contained. If you connect your USB drive to another computer, you can take your browsing history, your stored passwords, cache and bookmarks with you. Use the browser and you’ll find personal information is stored on your drive, rather than the host computer.

Again, as long as you boot up the browser from your storage device, no trace will be left on the host PC. Any Firefox extension or add-on is also self-contained, so use one to store Wifi passwords and access Wifi networks, for instance, and this information will be contained only on your portable device.

We recommend using an add-on such as Google Browser Sync to share your Firefox bookmarks and other information across computers. Connect your portable version of Firefox to any host computer and Google Browser Sync will access the remote host, download your latest bookmarks and synchronise with your portable device.

Mozilla Thunderbird 2 Portable Edition
Although you might not use Thunderbird to access email at work or even at home, there’s no reason you can’t use it while you are away from your main PC. The advantage of using an email client such as Thunderbird over a web-based client is that you can set it to display a professional signature, route emails via an outgoing mail server and make correspondence appear as if it has been sent from your office.
Set up Thunderbird to leave copies of your email on the server, rather than deleting them when you download. All your email will be stored on your portable device but a copy will reside on the server and will be deleted when you eventually download it to your home or work PC.

Portable Start Menu 1.3
After connecting your portable drive to a host computer it might seem natural to head to the Start menu to access its applications. For this reason, it would be easy to accidentally launch, say, the browser installed on the host computer rather than your portable edition of Firefox.

Portable Start Menu is a tool that enables you to configure applications on your removable drive and launch them from a special start menu. It will also make sure you’ve closed the portable version software launched on the host computer. If you start Firefox from your removable drive and accidentally leave it running on the host, the Portable Start Menu will automatically check and close any opened applications.