The so-called Web 2.0 is all about keeping your information on the Web, from photos on Flickr to e-mail via Yahoo or Gmail. Countering that trend is an even niftier one -- to carry all your data with you on a flash drive, including the programs you use and their settings.

It's easy to see why flash drives are taking off. Available with storage capacity up to 4 gigabytes, they're small enough to fit on your key chain, and use their standard USB connector to plug into a PC. That means your data is available from any PC, whether you're at a friend's house or an Internet cafe at the beach. What was missing was the ability to carry your own applications with you, so you weren't dependent on the programs on the other machine.

Enter the U3 system, a joint production of flash drive manufacturers SanDisk and Msystems.

The idea is ingenious and utterly simple. When you insert the drive into a USB port on the computer, a menu pops up with assorted programs that are available on the drive. You can easily download more, choosing from a variety, all customized for the U3 environment, some commercial, some free. Now you have a personal desktop environment tuned to fit your needs.

Take e-mail. Yes, I can get e-mail over the Web, but I find it cumbersome, and I'd rather work in my own e-mail program, which is Thunderbird.

Using a U3 flash drive, I can call up my own copy of Thunderbird, which has all the settings in place to access my mail account no matter where I am. Firefox is likewise available for browsing, complete with my own bookmarks and tweaks. There are synchronization options between the flash drive and my home PC as well.

But what particularly makes U3 outstanding is this: No personal information gets left behind when you disconnect your flash drive. If I'm sitting in a hotel business center somewhere, I don't want to wonder whether the work I've done is left behind in the computer's cache when I leave. A no-brainer? You bet.

Check www.u3.com for more background, a demo, lists of available drives and U3 software.

System Mechanic 6, a utility suite from Los-Angles based Iolo Technologies (www.iolo.com), presents me with a problem. I seldom use connected suites of software like this one or Norton SystemWorks to maintain my PC.

My preference is for small, targeted tools that do only one thing. But readers often ask for all-in-one packages, particularly for PC optimization, thinking they'll make system maintenance easy and therefore more frequent.

So I occasionally evaluate suites like System Mechanic, which is comprehensive indeed. The Pro version includes tools to do most everything, from optimizing the Windows registry, speeding up the startup process, finding and fixing hard drive problems, recovering deleted files, killing spyware and removing clutter to free up space. All-in-one packages sap system resources, but I don't find System Mechanic quite as burdensome as Norton SystemWorks.

The $69.95 System Mechanic 6 Professional, which includes the first-rate Kaspersky Labs anti-virus and firewall applications, produced no huge jump in performance, but those who want frequent optimization will find it easy to do through the program's one-click TotalCare option. Other tools I found helpful include a program for securely deleting personal data and a "drive scrubber" that completely erases a hard disk in ways that formatting cannot.

As to installation, I was confounded by the fact that to install the Kaspersky anti-virus program, I had to uninstall my ZoneAlarm firewall, even though I had no other antivirus program running at the time. I prefer the Kaspersky firewall product anyway and installed it with the anti-virus, but I dislike it when I lose configuration options because software takes an all-or-nothing approach.

This is a small annoyance but it points to a larger issue.

All-in-one packages either work or they don't. Those who have no problems tend to love them, while others (and it doesn't take much searching to locate problem reports on the Net) encounter significant issues. All I can say is that System Mechanic works fine on my PC with occasional reporting glitches, but those who want to use such a package should definitely try a trial version first. Fortunately, Iolo makes one available on its download page.

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