Got a USB stick? Take along your desktop with Ceedo Personal

It can be frustrating moving from computer to computer, finding the apps you use on one computer aren’t available on another, or that your carefully crafted settings aren’t in place when you switch to another machine. It’s why portable apps -- applications that are self-contained within a single folder -- are so popular, liberating you from a single PC by allowing you to run them from a USB drive.

Ceedo Personal enables you to carry a PC around in your pocket or at least the most useful parts of it. You can’t fit a keyboard, monitor or printer on a standard flash drive, but there’s plenty of room on one for a range of personal documents, photos and music and with Ceedo you can carry your programs around with you as well.

The program works with any computer that the drive is connected to. It provides a personal work space, including folders for My Documents, pictures and other data. It also provides you with a secondary Start Menu, including its own programs. You already get Internet Explorer installed, but you can add other programs by browsing to the Ceedo Programs Directory. This is a listing of programs that have portable versions that are compatible with Ceedo. When you download and install one, it’s installed to your flash drive and has its own entry in its start menu.

Should you use Ceedo’s version of Internet Explorer for browsing, all the browsing history, cookies and offline Internet files are stored on the removable drive along with the main Ceedo files. Once you eject the flash drive, using the eject option in Ceedo, all your settings are stored and removed from the host computer. It’s a very handy way to carry a work space around with you, set up in just the way you like it, including your own favourites, contacts and work in progress.

When you connect your portable drive, with Ceedo installed on it, to any other Windows computer, the program launches and you can get access to your personal start menu. Use it to launch any of your personal versions of programs or to access your files.

Ceedo Personal is available as a free 45-day trial for PCs running Windows XP or later. The full version costs $39. If the cost is off-putting, take a look at the open-source PortableApps.com Platform instead.