Absolutely Free Software -
Best Windows Freeware

This page is updated regularly. Last update: October 17, 2005.

update 10/17 Portable AbiWord now includes a grammar checker. Mobility Email, a portable email application based on Thunderbird. KeePass, a great, open source password manager.

Best Free Portable Internet Software for Windows

A word of caution, folks. If you are on a unfamiliar network, regardless of whether you use your own, portable application, your internet activity may be monitored by the administrator of the network. Don't be lulled into a sense of false privacy. If you're plugged straight into someone's cable or DSL modem, you should be fine (but even then, who knows if there's a key logger on the machine?).

Portable Web Browser

Firefox Portable Firefox

Surf the web without leaving any clues on the host computer. Oh, and use a superior browser while you're at it.

http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla

Portable Email Client /Newsreader

Thunderbird Portable Thunderbird

Mobility Email

updated 10/17

It's essential to get email on the road. Both Mobility Email and Portable Thunderbird allow you to do this safely and securely. Again, without leaving traces on the host computer. Both programs are based on Thunderbird, and both are excellent.

http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla

http://mobility.shaneland.co.uk/

Portable FTP Software

Filezilla Filezilla

I also recommend Filezilla in my standard desktop software category. Simple and clean, it runs perfectly off a USB drive.

http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/

Portable Chat Software

Trillian Anywhere Trillian Anywhere

Miranda Miranda

Chat on all the networks (AIM, ICQ, MSN, Jabber, and Yahoo! Messenger) with one client that you carry with you. Trillian Anywhere modifies Trillian so that you can run it from your key drive. Miranda also has a plugin architecture that extends to every new chat server or protocol that comes up including Skype. Both work well. Take your pick.

http://www.trilliananywhere.com

Portable Telnet / SSH

PuTTY PuTTY

PuTTY is a perfectly portable application. The champion of Telnet / SSH / sFTP clients needs no installation.

update 10/5
I received an email from Lolitka mentioning that PuTTY will save session date to the Windows registry and asking if there was a way to bypass this and save the information on the flash drive. The easiest way is to not save sessions, but to invoke Putty with command-line options to automatically connect to the host. There is no way to actually save a session to the USB device that I'm aware of.

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

Portable Website Downloader

HTTrack HTTrack

wGetGui wGetGui

HTTrack is the easiest way to download a site for offline viewing (or to put on your thumb drive). Watch out, though. If you want complete privacy - no traces left on the host computer, this might not be the way to go. It saves a recent file list in Windows registry.

A more private, but more complicated option is wGetGui, which is a graphical front-end for wGet. For those that don't know, wGet is a powerful, command-line tool that's used for downloading files via the http or ftp protocol. wGetGui puts a more friendly face on wGet, allowing you to check boxes for filter parameters.

http://www.httrack.com/

http://www.jensroesner.de/wgetgui

Portable RSS Reader / NewsFeed Reader

GreatNews GreatNews

A very nice, stand-alone RSS reader. If you prefer, you can use an online service like Plucker, Yahoo, or Google, but GreatNews has more customizable features such as the ability to categorize and label your feeds. You can also modify the appearance to your liking.

http://www.curiostudio.com/feature.html

Portable BitTorrent Client

µTorrent µTorrent

new! added October 10, 2005

Tiny(<100K), stand-alone BitTorrent client. It's not quite as powerful as Azureus, but it uses much fewer system resources. It supports all the goodies: simultaneous downloads, rate-limiting, prioritization, etc.

http://www.utorrent.com/