[Yahoo via Slashdot] With a gigabyte of flash memory now available for less than $100, these inexpensive digital storehouses can hold not just important data but also entire software programs. The information they carry can be encrypted and accessed speedily, a benefit of faster microprocessors. What this all means is that computer users are no longer at the mercy of the machine that happens to be nearby. Everything we need to interact with computers - even down to the appearance of our home PC’s desktop - can be carried with us and used on almost any computer.

After I published the original Portable CE article (see Portable CE 2.0 for the newest version), I really started to use my USB key more often than I expected - for everything from keeping copies of my favorites utilities to quickly transferring files between machine. The concept of running a full virtual machine directly off a key chain flash has huge potential - you get the portability of Web 2.0, but the richness of personalized client applications - all in your pocket.

My only complaint - applications should rely less on the registry and enable a simple xcopy deployment. These two things alone would really help make applications more portable.