That Smith

The best productivity tool I discovered is one I wish I learned earlier in my college career. This tool is portable software.

In my early days of going to class, I found that research for papers and group projects regularly required memorizing links or e-mailing bibliographies back and forth so work could be continued at a later time. I absolutely hated having to do research for projects in the first place, and even more disliked the time I wasted trying to find my place so I could pick up where I left off.

This issue usually arose from papers or projects I worked on at home, but then had lab days to work on it in class on as well. Back then you had notes, but it wasn’t possible to carry around all your bookmarks and browsing history in case you needed to find something you glanced at before. This was at least until I discovered that Firefox could be run in portable mode.

If you have a USB drive (aka flash drive, or whatever) I recommend checking out PortableApps.com for an entire suite of portable software.

• Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition
• Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition
• Pidgin Portable
• GIMP Portable

I started using it my senior year of college and have been carrying around my web browser, e-mail, instant messenger, and other important programs since.