Just a quick tip that I’ve been meaning to mention as my schedule allows for a few more posts these days… Have you ever heard of PortableApps.com? I used to use them quite bit, although not too much lately. These are popular software applications that have been packaged with the specific intent of running them from a USB stick. They have web browsers, email clients, virus scanners, image editors, and more. All of these are open source applications. You don’t have to install them, though, which is the nice thing. They are ready to run as-is. This also comes in particularly handy if you have an existing installation of some software (again, using Firefox as an example) and don’t want to mess with it. I ran into an issue with a client awhile back where Internet Explorer was having some issues with logging in to Workspace/Planning, but this particular version (something around 11.1.1.3) didn’t work with the current version of Firefox. It was, however, certified to work with a much older version of Firefox – version 3.5. What to do? Go to PortableApps.com, download the old Firefox binary from version 3.5, run it from the local hard drive without having to install, and presto, I was good to go. Next time you have a browser acting up or need to switch things up, this might be a decent way to go.