Ceedo

With the right software loaded onto a flash drive you can plug into PCs in Internet Cafes or in your friend's home and have almost the same facilities as on your own PC. U3 is a computing platform that enables applications to run directly off portable drives without relying on a host computer. There are many flash drives on sale now with U3 software preloaded, but I will address here the freely available Ceedo software that can be downloaded and installed on any flash drive. This way you can try before you buy, and see if you like the concept before committing to pay for the software or buy the preloaded drive. Ceedo is only available for Windows 2000, XP and Vista.

Installation is simple and initially sets up access to Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Microsoft Office for Word, Excel and PowerPoint. These applications are not installed on the flash drive but have menu items with links that point to the application installed on the host computer. On my desktop PC with MS Office loaded document files open in Word, whereas on my laptop with Open Office they open in Wordpad.

Password protection for the disk is preloaded but optional, and there are multiple languages offered.

The option to open Ceedo will normally appear as soon as the drive is plugged in - like autorun for CDs. Once installed it can be set to open automatically on any particular computer when the drive is inserted. The Ceedo Compact Bar at the bottom appears about midway along the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen and can be minimized to the system tray if you find it intrusive. When the Ceedo icon is clicked it opens the Easy-Access menu immediately above it with a familiar XP interface.

Users can install and run their own Ceedo approved programs directly off the drive without leaving temporary files on the host PC. I have installed Firefox (Browser), Thunderbird (mail client), Winamp (media player), IrfanView (image, video, sound), Spybot (security), EditPad (text editor), Pop Peeper (mail client), PassWordSafe (password protection) and Foxit Reader (PDF reader) to provide a comfortable environment. The All Programs menu lists the installed programs on the drive and shows a list of recently used programs on the left hand side of the Easy Access menu for quick re-use.

There is an extensive range of free and commercial programs available to satisfy a wide demand. These are downloaded and installed in one operation and are immediately operational. Primary access to this source is through the Add Programs menu item. But Argo extends this feature to permit many otherwise non-compatible programs to be installed. Argo will launch the installer for you and the program will be set-up on your Ceedo. After the installation is done, the program will immediately show up on your All Programs menu. In the interest of security I would recommend PassWordSafe as a safe way of generating and storing encrypted passwords in an encrypted folder. It is my outstanding choice from a number of such programs and can be used as a standalone program on any PC.

When the exit button to the right of the Ceedo icon is clicked it closes down all running programs, cleans up all files on the host PC, saves all data to the flash drive and sets it for safe ejection. There is no trace of your activity left on the host PC.

This flash drive is only 512Mb (which was a big drive when I bought it.) and before installing Ceedo I wondered whether that would be big enough. I estimate the system files and applications occupy about 146Mb of space. Add 22Mb to that for the few contents of My Documents and about 18Mb for the programs I have added, and I get pretty close to the 188.3Mb of my drive occupied that is reported by Ceedo. I have 300Mb of disk space left, but that is without any mail folders loaded, which total 170Mb. I don't retain a lot of the mail I receive, so I expect that many users will have many times that amount. If you really wanted to carry all your past mail - to make synchronisation easy - then you might have problems, even with a larger flash drive. Though U3 flash drives are available with up to 4GB capacity right now and regular flash drives up to enormous GigaBytes. Some would say that the obvious answer to that is Gmail, but I will leave that open for discussion. My approach will be to limit the mail I take with me, delete useless mail from the server, and leave important mail on the server for downloading to the home-based mail client.