TECH: Installing browser on flash drive easier than expected

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Recently I reported on Encrypt Stick which, among other things, supports a “privacy browser” on a USB drive.  (The $40 program also has a password vault and an file encrypt/decrypt module.) The privacy browser was rather weak, although it did have some privacy benefits.

I promised I would look for another browser which could be placed on a USB drive; the search was easier than I thought.

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox Version 3.6.13 is the latest release of Firefox.

I’ve used and recommended Firefox, a free, shareware browser with features that have, in part, defined the current state of the Internet browser. It has attracted a host of third party add-ons for additional features such as adding easier keyboard navigation, foreign language translation, instant weather reports or tinyurl.com.  You can download it for installation at Mozilla.com/en-US/Firefox.  Or you can download a portable version of Firefox from tinyurl.com/mam23.

Portable Apps

Portable Apps is a third party developer with a technique for loading executable applications to a USB flash drive so that they can be run directly from the USB drive without involving the Windows registry or the rest of the computer.

We began with Portable Firefox. Just click the “Download 3.6.13” located at tinyurl.com/mam23, and download Firefox and the Portable Apps support to your flash drive.   After a short time, Firefox is on the flash drive, ready to run from that location.

Two things to notice: first, in accordance with the latest few versions of Firefox, the program has a “start private browsing” tool that causes the browser to not save browsing history, passwords and such, so that you’ll be able to browse without any record of your destinations remaining on your computer. This is the same sort of thing that the browser in Encrypt Stick does, except that Firefox is a much better browser.

In addition, when you remove the flash drive from the computer, all of the history and other matters saved by the browser when not in private browsing mode is removed from your computer, because Firefox has saved it not on the computer, but on the flash drive.  History and such obviously can be useful: with Portable Firefox you have it, on whatever computer you wish to use, when you need it; on the other hand, if someone else wants to break into your computer to find it, they are out of luck, because it just isn’t there. (Your flash drive, which includes the history and similar items, is safely in your pocket, and not on the computer.) Obviously, this system won’t save you from a subpoena or e-discovery request; if you contemplate that sort of problem, you had better use private browsing and not record the information at all.

There are more reasons to consider Portable Firefox.  If you always use a single office computer, or perhaps one at the office and one at home, you can always have your browser configured in exactly the same way – the same add-ons, the same passwords, the same history and so forth.  Someone who often switches computers at the office, who uses a computer café or library computer, or a colleague’s computer on the road, may find it easier to slap a USB flash drive into the foreign computer, to get the same effect.

Altogether, the concept of the portable app is very useful, and the Portable Apps folks have realized it well.  There is no charge to the end user for their work, although, like any freeware developer, including the good folks who bring you Firefox itself, would not reject a contribution if you feel compelled to make one.

Portable Opera

There is, however, more.  What if you don’t like Firefox, but prefer Opera, an excellent browser that hasn’t gotten its proper share of spin. Portable Apps, under contract with the Opera folks, serves up the latest version of Opera, V 11.01, on the same sort of portable basis, at www.opera-usb.com/operausben.htm.  (Version 11.01, not portable, and lots of reasons to use Opera, may be downloaded at Opera.com.)

Opera has lots of features which are at least mildly useful, and some that are really important if you need them.  (I don’t use bit-torrent to download huge files, for example, but if I were a movie addict or enjoyed the British television, I would acquire Opera which has a bit-torrent reader built it.)  And I don’t use the e-mail module because Google Mail does an excellent job with the other Browsers. But the biggest reason not to use it that some websites don’t recognize Opera, and that can lead to problems that can be solved mostly by closing Opera and loading another browser. But if you haven’t already, you should give Opera a try.

Portable Apps Suite

The Portable Apps folks have one other bag of tricks, the Portable Apps Suite, which is designed to assist you whenever you are confronted with someone else’s computer, and aren’t familiar with or don’t want to use the software on the computer. (Possibly, you don’t want to use it because you want to avoid leaving traces of what you did on the foreign computer.)  Just take out your trustee USB flash drive on which you have installed the suite, and begin to use the foreign computer with your own familiar software on it.

The suite includes portable Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird, a Browser, Email Client and Calendar, a ClamWin antivirus program, Pidgin instant messenger program, Sumatra PDF reader, KeePass Password Manager, Cool Player Audio Player, PN Notes, and a couple of games.  The standard suite includes the entire OpenOffice Suite including word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, database and drawing. The “Lite” Suite replaces the OpenOffice programs with the Abi Word word processor. The Standard Suite takes 400 megabytes of space on the Flash Drive and the smaller Lite Suite, 250 megabytes.  All of the software that is part of either suite may be used by the owner free of charge.

First, either Firefox or Opera, when used as a portable app, is superior to the privacy browser in Encrypt Stick. The Portable Apps Suite does come with a password manager, which I did not test, but as far as I was able to ascertain, none of this software can encrypt a file. (Of course, simply storing the confidential file on your flash drive, rather than keeping it on your computer’s hard disk, will make it far more secret than previously, and you cannot practically use Encrypt Stick for secure e-mail, in any event.)

Are the portable apps generally useful in the law practice? Laptops are so inexpensive these days that there is probably little need to carry your own word processor or spreadsheet program with you, as a regular practice.  On the other hand, laptops are regularly lost or broken and it never hurts to carry a spare, in case you need it. All it costs is a little time (and $10 for the flash drive.)

The software provided for use on a USB flash drive by Portable Apps will not leave any tracking of your work on someone else’s computer, and does come in handy in case there is some sort of breakdown with your own computer. I prefer it to the functionality provided with Encrypt Stick.