After the first few repacks I’m noticing only about a 1 or 2 KB decrease in size as compared to the previous version, but I may as well finish.

• AdapterWatch – Another nice utility from NirSoft. It shows all sorts of info regarding your network interfaces. Useful for diagnosing problems while on strange systems.
• Autoruns – And another nice utility from Sysinternals. Like other utils that list all of the programs that start automatically when Windows does, but this one lists more stuff than you probably ever knew about. Really very useful.
• DM2 – This came from another product I liked called DialogMate. It’s amazingly useful and adds all sorts of little features to Windows without having to be “installed.” Check out the features overview. It also supports plugins.
• WinDirStat – Open source tool for creating a graphical treemap of your harddrive. Useful for finding what directories might be taking up too much space and so on.
• µTorrent – This is the client that fulfills all my BitTorrent needs. It’s small and powerful and even finds homes for stray puppies. Read this entry in the FAQ to learn how to force it to keep its settings in the app directory instead of the registry.

I really like this drive better than my old one. Not only is it smaller, it also has sharp instruments attached to it. Sharp things always makes stuff better.

• CurrPorts – There are many such apps and methods to view the currently open ports in Windows, including c:\netstat -a, but this is my favourite. It’s very feature-filled and is only 36.5K in size.
• TYPSoft FTP Server – Haven’t actually had a use for this while out yet, but I imagine that being able to temporarily set up an FTP server on someone’s system might be useful. Either that or I’m just really reaching now to find stuff to put on my drive.

I guess I’ll find out if this post shows up. I’ll be happy if it does, it’s always feels so much faster loading up an app instead of opening your browser. Especially when you have as short an attention span as I do at times. I swear the times I’ve opened up Firefox to do one thing and instead end up going to my usual sites by reflex…

Update: Cool, I guess it does.

It cycles randomly through a much bigger list, which I am still amassing. Man, I really do love software.

• NetMeter – This is a really nice freeware bandwidth meter. The default tracking layout is a bit ugly, but once you set it up how you like, it’s perfect.
• Process Explorer – This has replaced PrcView on my drive as my process explorer of choice. Sysinternals makes some good stuff.

Ahhh, so much software downloaded since last I posted here. I must catch up.

Since my last post on the topic, I’ve added a couple of things to my collection.

• CDisplay – Reading comics off a CD is a great way to waste some time when you’re stuck elsewhere with only a bare computer to play with. You can always just burn the program to the CD also, but I prefer sticking it on my USB drive.
• dsCRC, dsMD5, dsSHA – Okay, so most people wouldn’t really use these for anything, but it’s nice to have some kind of file verification software for when you’re on someone else’s possibly unsafe computer.
• Miranda – While I prefer Trillian Pro for my chatting needs at home, Miranda is definitely the right choice for portable chatting. With plugins to protect your account passwords and message logs, it’s also somewhat safer from the average person who might run off with your drive.
• MyIE2 – Alas, sometimes you are forced to use IE for certain things. When you’re on someone else’s system, though, it’s probably best to use something like this and disable plug-in support. Most people have their IE so cluttered with add-on toolbars and crap it’s ridiculous. Sadly, with the latest version they seem to have stopped offering the zipped version for download. You can still repackage and shrink it, but it’s so much nicer when you don’t have to use an installer.

And speaking of browsers, I’ve heard recently over at the MozillaZine Forums that with version 0.9, it’s now much easier to get Firefox to work on a portable drive. I haven’t had a chance to try it, but I definitely will soon. Expect a report.

So far I have chosen the following apps:

• Color Cop – A color sampling tool.
• dsDEL – A “secure” file deleter. It may not stop the FBI, but at least it’ll stop most people at the labs. The guys who made dsDEL has a ton of other cool tiny apps.
• EyeDropper – Another color sampling tool. I can never decide which I like better.
• FileZilla – My FTP client of choice. Supports SSH, has a clean interface and is open source.
• Media Player Classic – While I actually prefer ZoomPlayer while at home, MPC is more suited for a USB drive.
• Popcorn – My favorite light email client. Freeware mode allows only one POP3 account to be defined, though.
• PrcView – Tiny little process viewer for when the Windows Task Manager is restricted.
• PSPad – Amazingly good freeware text editor with built in FTP and tons of other cool features. Luckily, it writes all options and settings to ini files.
• PuTTY – The well-known telnet/SSH client. Perfect for when I need to log into my shell.

That’s all I have for now. I was able to whittle the size of all the apps down to a combined 5.07 megs. Not bad, I think. Theres a few other apps I am fiddling with to see how small I can get them. I’ll post them with links later if I am satisfied with their size.

Sadly, though, the main class I purchased the drive for is my art class (Photoshop work mainly and those .psd files can get BIG), and so the lab we’re using consists mainly of Macs. I’ve never used a Mac for more than a few minutes, especially OSX, and I have no idea what cool tiny software I could carry around.

Any help?

Yes, a new version of the best browser has been released. Version 0.7 has all sorts of new stuff and is a lot more polished than before.

Download the official release here.

As usual, those seeking an automatic installer can head over to seb’s site, or just snag it right here.

By the way, don’t forget to check out all the nifty extensions available for Firebird.

My favorites are:

• All-in-One Gestures – Firebird comes with Auto-Scroll and wheel scrolling, but this enhances those features and adds all new ones. It allows you to do gestures with the mouse to control the browser. You can also use mouse rocker navigation, which might be familiar to Opera users.
• Tab Browser Extensions – This extension is a for the nit picky users like myself who must have complete control over every aspect of the browser’s tab behaviour. It adds so many features I’m not even gonna attempt to list them.
• Web Developer Toolbar – This extension will most likely appeal to web developers, hence the name, but it’s got some features that anyone might appreciate. You can disable JavaScript on any site, hide all the images, view cookie inofrmation or the site’s CSS and so on.

I’m using Firebird right now and it’s making me tingly all over. Don’t you want to be tingly too?

• They are polishing up a lot of things that have been left messy for a long time.
• The downloading abilities are being made more user friendly.
• The developers finally got over a certain hangup they had over adding an Advanced Options
  window.
• You can now set any bookmark to open as a sidebar.
• Firebird finally has its own application icon.

Of course, if you’re boring and like to stay away from nightlies there is always the latest stable milestone release: 0.6.1. Either way, go try it!

Update: For you freaks who dislike unzipping things, here’s the installer for 0.6.1.