Tunes - Tuneflow

Windows only: OpenOffice.org 3, the latest version of the free, open-source office suite, has gotten a full thumb drive packaging by the PortableApps.com team.

Windows only: OpenOffice.org 3, the latest version of the free, open-source office suite, has gotten a full thumb drive packaging by the PortableApps.com team.

Windows only: Free application Flash Drive Reminder wants to ensure you never forget your thumb drive again when you leave your computer. It does so by adding an autoplay option to your thumb drive that, if chosen, provide reminders in two different ways, depending on which version you download.

USB Drives (for Windows systems): If you're the type who brings their USB flash-memory drive everywhere you go, yet often has to backtrack all the places you've been to find it, Flash Drive Reminder is definitely worth the download. The tiny app, and its auto-starting accompanying file, sit on your drive and activate whenever you've plugged it into a Windows system.

Windows only: Free application Eraser Portable puts previously mentioned Eraser—the popular open-source secure file deletion tool—on your thumb drive for secure file deletion on the go. Like the original, Eraser Portable can wipe any hard drive, optical media, files, folders, encrypted data, the Recycle Bin, and pretty much any other data you want to kill.

These days, it only takes an increasingly-cheap USB thumb drive and a program like UNetbootin to create a portable Linux desktop you can run on any computer that can boot from a USB port. But check out the list of distributions UNetbootin can download and install—it's huge, and the names don't tell you much about which distro is best for on-the-go computing.

Windows only: If you've got an older USB drive that can't quite fit all the great launchers from the PortableApps.com site, AppCompactor rides to your rescue with serious compression tools—in some cases, anyways.

While not as grandiose as having your own secret bookshelf door, constructing a hidden USB data stash won't take a whole weekend and involve a table saw. At the DIY website Instructables there is a step by step tutorial on hiding your data behind a phone jack plate.

Windows only: You've seen its flashy features and were impressed with its speed, and now you wish you could put Google Chrome on your thumb drive and take it with you wherever you go?