The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 5 (of 5)

Emergency Disc

I made an emergency mini compact disc (those wallet-friendly ones) a few month ago and it was instantly useful on a vacation. I was able to access my home PC to backup photos and exchange files between my relative's computer and my home PC with simple tools like WinSCP (winscp.sourceforge.net). There are other cool freebies on the disc that could come in handy in the future. Here are some of my questions relating to emergency discs:

* How many of you have one? What do you have on it? I know a lot of people who just love Knoppix (plus a USB drive).
* What software would you include on such a disc to ensure you can jack in your digital camera into any USB port in the world and download?
* Would you care to share with us the best shareware or commercial wares that are both small and effective for a wide variety of work? What works best for you?
* Are there DVD density wallet discs? Would you use them?

Li-fan Chen
Wednesday, July 7, 2004

Are you talking about the smaller CD's with two sides lopped off? The kind that some sales people are using for business cards?

Just curious.

Edward
Wednesday, July 7, 2004

I carry around a bunch of similar stuff on a USB drive ... utilities, tools, remote access, etc, plus virus scanners too. I've got a lot of stuff from cygwin, a lot of stuff from the sysinternals guys, a vnc client, a terminal services client, putty and friends, debuggers, etc. It's really great.

I've thought of burning a CD with it because every once in a while you do find a machine with no USB drive, or etc, and a CD would be handy. It's also much cheaper if lost! But I'm too lazy to keep burning one that's up to date, so I've gone with the USB drive for now..

Knoppix is pretty cool too ... I just find it a little slow since access times on a CD drive are terrible.

Michael Kale
Wednesday, July 7, 2004