A LAPTOP IS a handy thing to have, but lugging one around everywhere can be downright inconvenient. Fortunately, one solution fits right in your pocket: the ubiquitous USB flash drive (aka keychain/thumb drive).

With the right device and software, you can plug your flash drive into a computer at an Internet cafe, hotel business center, or elsewhere, and have all the tools and files you need to do your work-complete with your own personal launch menu. Sure, you can use online applications such as Google Docs or Zoho Office, but a flash drive allows you to carry a much wider assortment of the programs, utilities, and other fun doo¬dads you've come to depend on.

Here's everything you need, from hardware to software and beyond, to get going in pocket computing. Harness the Right Hardware To begin with, you need a good flash drive. Consider these tips before you buy. Take a drive on the reading edge: The faster your flash drive, the more smoothly programs will run. When shopping for a drive, look at the specs and try to find one with a read rate of 15 mbps (megabits per second; in megabytes, 1.9 MBps) or faster. If you already have a flash drive, you can evaluate its speed by using a free utility like HD Tach for Windows (on the OVO).

Look for high-speed USB: A USB 2.0 flash drive performs much better than a USB 1.x one. Make sure the drive you select specifies USB 2.0 or "high-speed USB."
U30rnotU3? Some flash drives (notably those from SanDisk) are labeled "U3" and can accommodate appli¬cations that use a proprietary format for USB drives. Such drives usually come with a built-in pop-up pro¬gram launcher called LaunchPad and a few pro¬grams, or they at least link to a Web page for download¬ing and installing free and for-pay U3 apps. SanDisk claims that only U3-compatible programs will run on such a drive, but I had no problem running U3 and non-U3 programs side by side on the same device. (Don't expect your non-U3 applications to show on the U3launch menu, however.)

With so many portable applications available from various free sources these days, you don't necessarily have to get a U3-equipped drive. If you do own one, you can either take advantage of the LaunchPad feature and its various apps or find utilities for removing U3 LaunchPad software from SanDisk drives and from non-SanDisk drives. If you change your mind about such removal, SanDisk has a free tool for getting the software back.