The Smorgasbord

If you like this tutorial guide - please digg it!

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

With all the people downgrading from Windows Vista to XP, I felt this was a pretty timely post. You can’t boot Windows XP from a floppy disc, but you can from a CD Rom if you need to reinstall or make a repair. Burning CD’s is so passe anymore - can’t you just boot Windows XP from a USB flash memory stick drive? Of course you can - if you know how!

What’s more - you can use applications you’ve installed on the flash drive as well to fix any PC problems you may have.

First - you’re going to need a program called PEBuilder - download it here. The PEBuilder Home page is here. PE Builder is “Pre-Installed Environment Builder” - basically think of it as a freeware way to build a “Windows” LiveCD (like Linux).

As the home page states it will give you:

• A complete Win32 environment with network support
• A GUI or graphical user interface (800×600)
• FAT/NTFS filesystem support
• You get the ability to:
• Do burn in testing with no installed OS
• Rescue files or boot a dead PC
• Perform Virus scan, remove trojans, fix problems, etc.

Microsoft already has a PE or Pre-Installed Environment utility - BUT, it’s only availble to big enterprise and OEM companies, AND it’s only command line (no GUI). Ok, now that you have to tool to build a PE, you need to get another tool to install that PE to a usb flash drive. So you need download PE to USB, a program that was specifically designed to use PEBuilder and install that PE to a flash drive.

Now I’m going to show you how to get this done in 5 easy steps:

1. Install PEBuilder
2. Copy your “i386″ directory from your Windows XP Pro SP2 CD to a folder in the PE Builder directory called “BartPE”
3. Extract the PEtoUSB files to the PEBuilder folder
4. Run the PE to USB program and select “Enable Disk Format”, “Quick Format”, and “Enable File Copy”. For “Source Path” select the “BartPE” folder
5. REBOOT with USB flash drive and you will have a running Windows environment on a stick! (enable usb boot in bios if needed)

If you have something to add or a suggestion about building a Windows booting Flash drive - please, comment now!

Oh - and if by some chance you need a geeky new USB flash drive - then I can tell you some of the best deals are on eBay! Here are some usb flash memory drive auctions on eBay right now!

I was looking at what was on digg this morning, and came across this list of Top 10 Free Linux Games. I’ve been using Ubuntu on several PC’s for 3-4 years now, and for some reason I had no idea that there were this many free 3D games that were Free for Linux! I guess I spend too much time building web sites and not enough time playing games! I’m definitely going to have to download and install some of these to see how good they are! I want you to check out the list for yourself, but here were the things that surprised me:

America’s Army: Apparently this game is owned by the US Government and has been out since 2002? WTF! It’s a “recruiting tool” to get people to join the army? I guess it’s very popular with 4,500 people playing at any given time.

True Combat Elite: This is a Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory mod? It supports widescreen and letterbox, and has anti-cheat software!

Open Racing Car Simulator: This one really surprised me, mostly because it’s a racing game. Well - a simulator. Nearly all of the games I was familiar with for Linux were First Person Shooters, basically all like Quake copies. This is awesome, a racing game for Linux!

Frets on Fire: Now here’s a game I actually knew about, and played on Windows, but I didn’t know there was a Linux version. Frets on Fire is basically the Open Source version of Guitar Hero, and is just as fun to play! And there are tons of songs for it because it’s open source! This one I’m going to have to put on my Ubuntu box for sure!

Track Mania: is another car game, but this one has crazy short tracks with acrobatics and tricks. Very cool, another driving game for Linux I didn’t know about!

Again, be sure to visit the full list for all 10 games! Read the comments too, because there were lots of games listed there I didn’t know about as well, like Digital Painball 2, Gillo, and Sauerbraten!

I came across something I just had to share that has changed the way I work quite a bit. I was doing StumbleUpon one day, and one of the first pages I came across was Portableapps.com. Now I’ve blogged about both Portable Firefox and Portable Opera before. These are web browsers you can install and run directly from your USB memory stick. But Portable Apps is different because it’s basically a menu driven “work suite” for your thumb drive. You download the PortableApps.exe file, and when you run the setup (either full or lightweight version) it actually fully installs working applications on your flash drive. And it can be any kind of external hard drive, memory stick, flash card, thumb drive, etc. It’s going to fully install the applications with no need to change your registry in any way, and no need to place or modify a single file on your computers hard drive. The applications are completely “portable” - you take them with you on the go wherever you take your external drive, card, or stick. Whatever computer you are at, wherever you are - everything is with you every time.This has quite a few advantages if you think about it. Do you have a policy at work where you can’t install any applications at all? Maybe they forced Windows Group Policy on you that won’t even allow it to happen. Can’t access your home email at work? Can’t IM at work? Using a work laptop on a trip? Using an Internet Kiosk? Are you at the Library, or a friend or relatives house? Do you have multiple computers in your house? You get the picture…

This post of part of The Smorgasbord Tech Reviews series!

So, no I’m going to describe how I use Portable Apps and you can apply it to best suit you. First of all, I needed a new thumb drive. You may have one already. I had several, but they were only a few hundred megabytes. I knew I wanted one at least 2GB or more, and I didn’t want to spend more than $20 or $30. I did what I usually do - I looked on Amazon. You could get one on eBay, but I didn’t want to fool around with that this time (waiting or an auction to end). I wanted my drive in a few days. And I didn’t do TigerDirect or NewEgg simply because I didn’t feel like paying $6 shipping on such a low cost item. I went over to The Smorgasbord Store, and I did a search for USB Flash Drive 2GB. Right away I found many in the $20 price range. I picked one I could get free shipping on and place the order.

Three days later I had my new 2GB thumb drive, a good Kingston one with a eyelet for my keychain. I plugged it in and installed the full version of Portable Apps. Once installed, there is an autorun file - so when you plug in the drive to your computer the menu should load automatically, but if it doesn’t just go to “My Computer”, find your thumb drive, open it, and click on “StartPortableApps.exe”.

Now, you’re going to get a menu that looks just like this one:

[photopress:portable_apps.jpg,full,pp_image]

Wow! Your own customizable start menu just for your portable drive! You get many applications pre-intalled (depending on which version you downloaded). You get Firefox, an IM client, the Open Office Suite, and more! Think about what you’ve got here for a minute. You can open and edit just about any version MS Office doc from your drive. You can use your own portable Firefox, take your bookmarks with you wherever you go, save your own password in Firefox Password Manager, you have your own cache, your own Firefox extensions, everywhere you go you have a customized browser just the way you like it! At work, at the Library, at your mom’s house, on any computer in your house - it’s all with you every time! You can IM using any messenger service with GAIM, and you’ll never have to worry about installing YIM, AIM, or MSN again! There is also a built-in backup function on the menu, so you can backup everything on your drive to your main computer anytime you want.

Be Organized: There are links on the menu to “Documents”, “Pictures”, “Video”, “Music” - and each link opens a folder on your drive that you drag and drop stuff into. Wow, you can keep your important docs on the go, pictures from your digital camera, your favorite mp3’s, or video clips! The bigger your external drive, card, or stick - the more stuff you can take with you!

Get More Portable Apps: In my opinion, some of the greatest portable apps you’ll need to add. On the menu, just click “Options” and “Get More Apps”. Download the ones you like, then go back to the menu “Options” and “Add New App”. You can remove apps the same way. Now, I maintain web sites, write code, edit video, audio, and edit graphics as well. So, I downloaded and installed “Notepad++ Portable” (text editor), “Nvu Portable” (web editor), “Gimp Portable” (graphics editor on a par with Photoshop), “Filezilla Portable” (FTP client), “PuTTy Portable” (SSH telnet client), “Audacity Portable” (Audio Editor), “MPlayer Portable” (movie and media player), “VirtualDub Portable” (Video Editor), “Sumatra PDF Portable” (PDF Viewer), “7-Zip Portable” (zip and unzip stuff), “Eraser Portable” (erase files securely), “KeePass Password Safe” (keep an encrypted password db), and last “Toucan” (an advanced backup utility).

Wow! So now, I can do web editing, graphic editing, audio and video editing, I can FTP or telnet, view PDF files, zip and unzip stuff, I can securely store all my password, securely delete files - and EVERY single program is COMPLETELY FREE as is PortableApps itself! You cannot ask for a better bargain!! I want to talk about “Toucan” for a sec too. Portable Apps has a backup function, but with Toucan you can schedule backups, filter out things to backup (just these kinds of files from these folders), you can compare folders, update files newer than a certain date, etc.

OK - that’s my review! I love Portable Apps and I know use it and my new 2GB thumb drive every day! It has saved me tons of time, and everything is with me everywhere I go now! Do you have an app that has saved you time? Do you know of other portable or thumb drive utils? Please, comment now and share with everyone!

Oh - and this is the flash drive I have and installed portable apps on - and I love it!

Kingston Data Traveler II Plus - Migo Edition - USB flash drive - 2 GB ( DTII+M/2GB ) (Retail Package)

oh - and you can get flash drives at very reasonable prices on eBay as well:

Here’s a resource page you need to bookmark - “45 Best Freeware Design Programs”. This guy really did his homework. I’ve read and even created many resource or “roundup” pages, but this is one of the best I’ve seen. If you work with web sites, or graphics, or you have a myspace or facebook page, or just like fiddling around with new software you should bookmark this page now!

First of all, everything on this page appears to be a genuine freeware, no bs, no “shareware” or ‘limited use’ programs. Each and everyone has a clear description and a screenshot. In addition, they are groups in categories like “Image Editing”, “Illustration”, “Authoring Tools”, “Animation”, “3D Modeling & CAD”, “Flash Tools”, and “Useful Tools”. Each and every description tell what the programs does, what the author’s experience with it was, and other miscellaneous info to give you a well-rounded opinion of whether or not the tool is for you. Check it out, this bookmark is a keeper!