Another tool for the computer geek’s utility belt

Forget reinstalling Windoze from CD. Stick it on a USB flash drive. All the instructions are provided for creating a bootable USB flash drive and installing WinXP on it. And if you have a large enough flash drive, all those other useful programs like anti-virus, spyware detectors, CD burning software, etc can go on it too. That will probably save you from carrying around more CDs or hunting around the Net for the software.
Of course, your computer needs to be able to boot from a USB device in the first place. The article says for newer computers this shouldn’t be a problem. For middle aged computers, it should be possible with a BIOS update. For old computers, you’re probably better off getting a new one anyway.