I’ve written before about the PortableApps suite of mobile applications, which is a convenient way to put many free, open-source applications on a USB thumb drive, or any portable drive, in one download. Once the applications are on your portable drive, you can use them from any Windows-based computer, anytime. USB thumb drives offering lots of capacity have become very inexpensive, but what if you have an older one with less capacity, or a drive that’s nearly full? If that’s your situation, Tiny USB Office is a solid suite of tiny applications that, at only 2.5 megabytes, can give you a lot of functionality on virtually any drive.

Tiny USB Office contains small, portable versions of common Windows applications in several useful categories, and they load and unload like a charm from any portable drive. In the suite, you get:

• Database Creation (CSVed)
• Data Encryption (DScrypt)
• Email Client Software (NPopUK)
• File Compression (100k Zipper)
• File Sharing (HFS)
• File Transfer (FTP Wanderer)
• Flowchart Creation (EVE Vector Editor)
• MSN Messenger Client (PixaMSN)
• Tree-Style Outliner Software (Mempad)
• PDF Creation (PDF Producer)
• Password Recovery (XPass)
• Secure Deletion (DSdel)
• Spreadsheet Creation (Spread32)
• Text Editing (TedNotepad)
• Word Processing (Kpad)
• Program Launching (Qsel)

The applications in Tiny USB Office are definitely not full-blown replacements for the applications you normally use, but they’re not intended to be. Instead, they are tools you can keep in your pocket, like a Swiss Army knife, to get most common computing tasks done when you need to. For example, the Kpad word processor looks and feels a lot like Windows Notepad, and isn’t meant to be a replacement for a full word processor. But Kpad is perfectly fine for composing a blog post while on the go, or reporting from an event.

Some of the applications are very tidy, focused and useful tools to have on hand, and you may come to like them. The EVE Vector Editor, for example, is a very simple way to do on-the-fly flowcharts, and PDF Producer does quick and easy conversion of files to PDF.

I’ve come to depend on my USB thumb drive for mobile use, and many owners of netbooks are increasingly using them to add a little local storage capacity. No matter what type of portable drive is available to you, Tiny USB Office is one of the leanest, meanest way to get lots of tasks done on the go.

What apps do you have on your thumb drive?

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RocketDock is an animated application launcher that works very much like the Dock in Mac OS X. It’s specifically designed to run on computers that aren’t speed demons, and sticks to simple animations such as icons that bounce as you hover over them. It’s a very handy way to launch applications, particularly on a netbook’s small screen.

TinyResMeter provides a pop-up summary of the system resources that you have in use. Since many netbooks have limited resources, this can be handy in warning you to shut down processes or applications that are hogging resources. It’s not the prettiest resource monitoring application, but it’s not meant to be. It’s lightweight, and stays focused on essential system processes.

VLC Media Player is an open-source media player application that is much more lightweight than its competitors. I use it all the time, and love it. It supports most popular audio and video formats, and has a very active open-source community that constantly improves it.

USB Thumb Drive. While a USB thumb drive isn’t exactly a software utility, it’s one of the most essential sidekicks you can get for your netbook. They have risen in capacity and fallen in price: you can get a 64GB thumb drive that fits in your pocket for under $100. I highly recommend downloading PortableApps, which delivers a huge collection of useful open-source applications and utilities that you can keep on your thumb drive. Netbooks generally have limited storage space, so you can’t hoard large collections of apps. It’s reassuring to know that whenever you need to carry out a task, it’s highly likely that there will be something in the Portable Apps collection on your thumb drive that will be able to do it.

Share your netbook tips in the comments.

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