Last updated on February 19, 2010
It’s great that the applications we use are so portable. In fact, some of the apps OPLIN techs use can fit on a thumb drive. Here are some of their favorites.
- PortableApps.com Suite™ is a complete collection of portable apps including a web browser, email client, office suite, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client, anti-virus, audio player, Sudoku game, password manager, PDF reader, minesweeper clone, backup utility and integrated menu, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you’re ready to go.
- Win Patrol allows you to monitor start-up apps and stuff running in the background (such as spyware). Read more about it and download it here.
- Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder is a freeware open source utility that retrieves your Product Key (cd key) used to install Windows from your registry. It allows you to print or save your keys for safekeeping. It works on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, Server 2003, Server 2008, Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007 family of products. It also has a community-updated configuration file that retrieves product keys for many other applications. Another feature is the ability to retrieve product keys from unbootable Windows installations.
- Sometimes it’s a bit difficult to boot from a USB flash drive, but if you can, a great way to get a small, quick Linux install completed is by downloading a Knoppix CD. The latest version includes recent Linux software and desktop environments. The DVD includes programs such as OpenOffice.org, Abiword, The Gimp, Konqueror, Mozilla, Apache, PHP, MySQL and hundreds of other quality open source programs.
Keep those small applications handy for those moments when you least think you’ll need them.
Cool fact:
There were just too many apps to include in the OPLIN 4Cast. For further reading:
Deep Burner – Free CD burning software for any machine – MAC, Windows or Lynix/Ubuntu
Crimson Editor – Text editor so you can color-code text as you are editing config files (or XML, PHP, HTML), some of its bigger features include easy syntax highlighting, macro recording, and column editing mode.
PuTTY is a free, open source Telnet and SSH client and WinSCP free FTP/SFTP client (both for Windows since SSH and SFTP don’t come naturally to Windows).
Feel free to add your favorites!
