I’ve known about portable browsers — the ones that can be installed on a USB drive, such as Firefox — for a few years. But I never really thought much about using them myself, that is, until I figured out how useful they are in situations where I do not or cannot have administrator privileges on my PC.

Last week I decided to give the portable version of Firefox a try. Then I also decided to see if someone had come up with a portable version of my favorite browser, Flock. Fortunately, someone has already thought of this. I installed the portable versions of Firefox and Flock on my USB drive and voila, I was freed from the oppressive and limiting strangehold of Internet Explorer! (I’m exaggerating a little of course, but I do hate IE.)

I know that there are limitations to their use but for now, I am really pleased with how the portable versions of these browsers work. Both Firefox and Flock run quite smoothly on my USB drive. I have noticed no degradation of load time or anything like that.

On a slight tangent…I am somewhat surprised that there hasn’t been more discussion among techie librarian folks about Flock. I think it’s a great tool, one that is well suited for the kinds of things that I like to do, such as blogging, photo sharing, sharing of bookmarks, etc. Almost all of these features are available in Firefox, too, but they are more nicely integrated in a single package with Flock. The major limitation I find with Flock is the lack of extensions that I find indispensable, including FlashBlock, TinyURL Creator, Adblock Filter Set Updater, and others.