With 8GB flash drives available for under $20 and 32GB drives edging into the mainstream, nobody can blame you for shelving old USB sticks. Well, the kindly folks at Gizmodo have put together a short guide of possibilities for what you can do with your drawer full of USB sticks. No, they're not the most exciting of applications, but these possibilities make the USB drives much more useful than what they are currently doing: collecting dust and taking up space unnecessarily. There are nearly endless ways to bring a USB stick out of retirement, and they're not just gimmicks: virtually all USB sticks, 32MB USB 1.1 dinosaurs included, can be repurposed into anything from a lifesaving troubleshooting tool to an entire portable OS:

Turn it into a physical "key" for your computer - For security freaks or the extraordinarily literal-minded, Vista has built-in software to convert your USB key into an actual key, such that your PC won't boot without having it inserted. It might not be ideal if your key may be old enough that it is likely to fail on you, if you have a propensity to lose tiny things, or if your laptop only has one or two USB ports to begin with, but it definitely offers a special kind of peace of mind. For Macs, Rohos essentially does the same thing, but at $30, it's not particularly recession-friendly.

Install a portable OS - This is actually simpler and less esoteric than it sounds-installing a wide array of Linux systems is pretty easy nowadays, and will more importantly net you a fully functional desktop that you can take with you wherever you go. Lifehacker recently assembled a useful comparison of popular USB-able Linux distributions, in which they recommend the fantastic UNetbootin or creating the bootable keys in the first place. It's worth noting that two of these distros will work on keys at less than 128MB capacity (DSL is just 50MB, total) and all carry a legitimately useful range of apps.

Use portable apps to create a pocketable user profile - Most free software now comes in a portable variety, meaning that at least under Windows, programs that normally extend their tentacles into your user profile and registry can be installed completely-user data included-onto a USB stick. All you do is insert the stick and find the desired .exe, and you're good to go. The most obvious advantage to this is profile portability-in other words, your portable Firefox (or Opera or Chrome) isn't just the app, it's your favorites, history, user preferences and cookies too. The portable version of Pidgin, a multiprotocol IM program, can hold your account data, transcripts and settings. Most of these installations are quite small-Firefox is just 8MB, for example-so you can build an extensive user profile on all but the oldest keys.

Create a powerful troubleshooting toolbelt - Portable antivirus and file recovery apps are convenient, but a USB key can be loaded up with much more powerful software. Ultimate Boot CD for Windows is a sort of software panacea which, in addition to including a selection of Windows maintenance apps, carries a veritable treasure trove of low-level troubleshooting programs, made accessible by booting into a sort of temporary "Windows Lite" desktop. It can manage disk deletion and partitioning, software and hardware diagnostics and a huge variety of lifesaving recovery functions. Despite the "CD" part of its name, Ultimate Boot CD for Windows can be loaded onto a USB key, though it requires a Windows installation disc from which to build the aforementioned "Windows Lite" environment. If you don't run Windows but still want a basic DOS-based suite of hardware diagnostics and disk tools, the vanilla Ultimate Boot CD has you covered.