Portable applications are becoming more popular. Laptops can only become so small and lightweight and, once you've factored in the charger and laptop bag, most people won't want to be taking their laptop on holiday or having to drag it around town unnecessarily. A better option is to grab a portable hard drive and install various portable applications. Connect this hard drive to any host computer and all your information is stored on the drive. You can take your work, email and web browser with you, on the road.

Portable Thunderbird 2.0.0.4 and EssentialPIM Free 2.0 have recently been released.  Portable Thunderbird will enable you to take your Thunderbird-based email on the road. Well, you could simply use this email app to access any POP3 email and, if you turn off the feature to delete the email on the your POP3 server, it's an ideal on-the-road email client. EssentialPIM Free 2.0 is the latest version of the superb diary and contact manager, in a portable edition.

27 Jun 2007