Professionals and business users often need to have full access to their ICT resources, while on the road. Using laptops alone does not resolve all issues. The following issues are involved and need be considered:

• Data portability
• Online application portability
• Offline application portability

Data portability is easily achieved by carrying a reliable Flash memory (capacities have reached 32 GB) or a portable 3.5 inch hard disk if needing storage capacities in the order of 100's of GB. In fact, 2.5 inch and even 1.8 inch hard disks with over 100GB capacities and reasonable access times are becoming available. There is also the revolutionary SDD 9or Solid State Drive), which has no mechanical parts and has an almost equivalent area as a credit card.

Application portability

Online application portability is two fold:

If the user is part of an organization that has an intranet and own-hosted applications, then remote VPN access is clearly the solution.

However, in the absence of an intranet such as the case of small businesses or independent professionals; there needs to be a way to carry applications around.

The best known solution is to carry a flash memory drive with U3 software installed, which is essentially a layer that interfaces to Windows registry to enable portable installation of most essential online applications and some offline applications. U3 applications supported include:

• Web browser (Mozilla Firefox, Opera): so you keep your bookmarks along
• Email client (Mozilla Thunderbird): keeping both your email and contact archives along
• Internet phone (Skype): you guarantee you can make cheap internet calls from anywhere and also have you Skype contact list handy
• Password safe; keeping along the passwords of the many online accounts you may need to use spontaneously
• Office applications (Open Office): even if you don't get the convenience and features of Microsoft office tools, you have functional office applications that you can temporarily use and port your files later
• Security software
• Data synchronization software; so you can later synchronize to your main PC(s)

An evolving freware alternative to U3 is PortableApps.com, where all application private data remains within the install folder. Since the last does not require the installation of any middle ware on your portable drive, it is strongly recommended to try and see if the applications supported cover your portability needs and work as expected. Most above applications, or equivalent are supported. You actually download a "portable" version of each, which is not the same installable version as the regular one, but is developed and published by the same software provider.