Rather than taking a laptop on holiday or relying on your Blackberry for email, an easier solution would be to package your favourite portable applications on a removable drive and then take this on the road. Simply insert the portable drive, use the apps and you shouldn’t leave a trace on the host computer.

What happens when an application isn’t available in a portable format? There are many specialist apps that you may require as part of your job (and is the primary reason why you have to take your laptop with you, when you leave the office).

PackageFactory for U3 is a free tool for non-commercial use that enables you to turn just about any Windows application in to a portable version which you can use on your flash drive or similar device. This is all good in theory, but the developers add a disclaimer to their plan where they warn that the intended application needs to be either U3 aware or rely minimally on the Registry. Why? As anything that writes to the host Registry isn’t a true portable application – no-one wants you to leave a trace of your software on their machine.

How would most users know whether the target application relies heavily on the Registry or not? The application is ideal, in theory, but whether it’s truly practical for your key apps, is another matter.