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Can You Run Outlook directly from a USB Flash Drive?
Before answering that question, we'll answer
this question:-
Why would you want to run Outlook directly from a USB flash drive?
The answer is if you have to use a "foreign"
computer, say while travelling, and you want convenient access to all
your email data.
With an Arrowmail account, we allow for just such
occasions by providing webmail access to your mailbox, but we're the
first to admit that the webmail "experience" isn't as nice as real
Outlook. Searching for something is harder and slower, especially if you
have a large mailbox.
It doesn't take long to setup an Outlook Anywhere connection on any PC, directly with the Arrowmail Exchange
server but, if this is a PC you're only going to be using for a short
time, there are several reasons why this may not be feasible or
desirable:-
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The owner of the PC doesn't want you to setup your
own Outlook Profile or Outlook isn't installed on the PC. |
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If you have a large mailbox it can take hours for
your local cached copy to synchronise with your mailbox on the
server. |
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You don't want to leave any data or configuration
settings behind after you've finished. |
In such situations you could just use your own laptop which already
has Outlook setup properly and the locally-cached mailbox is likely to only be a day on so behind
in synchronization, but:-
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Not all airport lounges, Internet Cafes and hotel
business centres permit you to connect your own laptop to their
network. |
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If the information in your mailbox is highly
confidential, an encrypted flash drive may be less of a target for thieves
than a laptop and therefore pose less of a security risk for your
company's data. |
If you didn't already have a fully-synchronised Arrowmail Exchange
account, a flash drive would be a way of carrying your Outlook data
around with you, between PCs, but this would be a poor substitute,
mainly because your Outlook data is then only in one place, the flash
drive, which could easily suffer some mishap.
If you have an Arrowmail Exchange account the occasions will be fairly
rare when running Outlook from a flash drive is the best way to access
your email data but, nonetheless, given the correct circumstances the
flash drive method could prove a useful solution.
What do we mean by "Run Outlook directly from a USB Flash Drive"
We mean that, as well as your Outlook data, in the form of a PST or
OST file, the flash drive also holds all the program and
configuration files necessary to run the Outlook program itself and no
reference is needed to files on the host PC or its Registry.
The host PC doesn't boot from the flash drive so it's still the normal operating
system on the PC that runs the Outlook program directly from the flash drive.
So, back to the main question:-
Can You Run Outlook directly from a USB Flash Drive?
No!
Sandisk has developed a standard to allow a program to be run
directly from a flash drive.
It's called U3 and, if you buy a U3 flash drive, there are many
programs that you can already run directly from it. You'll find a
comprehensive list of them
here.
There are 100s of them, like Firefox, Skype, OpenOffice, antivirus
programs but nothing from Microsoft.
There are programs that can synchronise with Exchange servers but
which are not, I fear, an acceptable substitute for Outlook.
Microsoft has entered into an agreement with Sandisk whereby Sandisk
will develop a new enhanced U3 standard while Microsoft will develop
Office for Flash Drives which will use this new standard.
We may see the fruits of this agreement sometime in 2008, after which
time the answer to the question posed repeatedly by this webpage will
then, hopefully, be Yes!
What's the Difference between a U3 Flash Drive and a
Normal Flash Drive?
Not much.
The drive occupies 2 drive letters, one of which pretends to be a CD
drive so that, even if "auto-play" has been turned off for flash drives,
the CD auto-play function will still the run the U3 Launchpad program when
you insert the drive.
Launchpad is a menu which shows all the programs installed on a U3 flash
drive.
Here's what it looks like:-
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Quick Facts about U3 Flash Drives
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Programs running from a U3 flash drive do use
hard disk space on the host PC but they must "clean up" before
exiting and, if you don't eject the drive in an orderly fashion,
there's likely to be some debris left behind. |
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You can get a Launchpad uninstaller if you try a U3 drive,
don't like it and just want it to behave as a regular flash
drive. There's also a re-installer if you change your mind
again. |
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Launchpad only works with Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 and
later Microsoft operating systems. To Linux and Mac OS they
appear as a regular flash drive. |
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Software can be downloaded and installed onto a U3 drive
without needing
administrator-level rights to the host PC. |
While U3 Flash Drives, with their ability to store both data, applications
and configuration settings, may be of use to some people, it doesn't seem
to be quite there yet as an elegant, universal solution to computing on the
move.
No wonder Microsoft are waiting for the next generation before giving
us Outlook-on-a-stick.
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