Here's an action item for you, dear reader, and finally a decent reason to put your USB key to work other than just holding family photos.

Download and install the PortableApps Suite from PortableApps.com. It's free, released 1.0 a few days back, and it's a collection of totally portable apps (they don't touch your hard drive) and an integrated menuing system that can run automatically via Autoruns.inf.

• Standard Edition - 90MB, includes ClamWin Portable (antivirus), Firefox Portable (web browser), Gaim Portable (instant messaging), OpenOffice.org Portable (office suite), Sudoku Portable (puzzle game), Sunbird Portable (calendar/task manager) and Thunderbird Portable (email client) and runs comfortably from a 512MB drive.
• Lite Edition - 30MBs, Uses AbiWord Portable (word processor) instead of OpenOffice.org Portable and runs comfortably from a 256MB drive.
• Base Edition - 1MB, If you'd like to pick and choose exactly which apps to include, you can try Portable Apps Suite (Base Edition). This is a stripped down package with just the PortableApps Menu, PortableApps Backup utility and custom folders, icons and autorun. It's less than 1MB installed, so it's a great option for smaller drives.
  [PortableApps]

This suite also includes a backup application that will backup your apps, settings and documents (on the drive in a specific location) to your local hard drive.

I use this Suite on a tiny 2GB drive (that Omar turned me on to) that lives in my wallet (The best wallet I've ever owned, only US$5.50 from Umbra). On the drive is a 1 GIG TrueCrypt disk - my "getaway drive" - and the other gig is for Portable Apps. I run the standard suite, plus Notepad2, uTorrent and TorPark. There's lots of additional apps you can add.