hey.
am currently building an usb-stick.
here some questions:
1. do i need a firewall when i launch usb-stick-applications at my own pc, where anyway is a firewall + antivirus installed? is the usb-stick an own "environment"?
2. are the progs really caching on the stick // is there really nothing saved on the real computer? for example the cache of "firefox portable".
/€dit: run firefox portable from usb-stick, remove the stick, close firefox, restart windows, plug in the stick and run firefox portable again, then: SESSION MANAGER CAN RESTORE LAST STATE, THOUGH STICK WAS REMOVED!!!!
3. encrypting the drive: which tool to use? truecrypt portable for example is not available / only usable with admin rights.
4. i need this cause i use normal windows for public surfing, and want to use linux for anonymous surfing.
5. what happens if i install portable apps on a live-cd, for example linux live + firefox portable. that would be best. i can plug my usb-stick anywhere, run my own operating system, doing all i want to with the computer 
cya
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1. Unfortunately the usb is NOT an own environment. As soon as you plug it in a PC, it becomes a part of that PC, so its very hard to protect it from any malicious software that might be running on the PC.
2. If you close all your Applications that are running from the usb correctly before you (safely) remove it, there is no personal data left behind. There will always be traces left so a very advanced user/Admin can tell which programs you run but he/she cant tell anything personal about you. The firefox cache for example is in the PCs RAM and not on the hard drive nor on the usb drive so even with an undelete program you couldn't tell anything.
5. For that you'd have to reboot the Computer which you wont be able to do in most public places. You could run the live-cd in an emulator but from my knowledge this is far more complicated than just using Firefox Portable.
And to put it on a life cd isn't necessary in my opinion cause most of them already have Firefox.
Oh and welcome here
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
1. do i need a firewall when i launch usb-stick-applications at my own pc,
Strongly recommended.
where anyway is a firewall + antivirus installed?
Both run on the pc's host OS, as will the USB's apps.
is the usb-stick an own "environment"?
No.
is there really nothing saved on the real computer?
Unlikely. Not a design objective of Portable apps or U3 apps.
3. encrypting the drive: which tool to use? truecrypt portable for example is not available / only usable with admin rights.
All encrypting apps require admin rights.
doing all i want to with the computer
You can do all you want with the pcs you own. If the pcs belong to someone else you best abide by the owner's rules/policies/laws. Portable apps is not designed to help you break them.
PS Anything loaded into a Windows' pc's RAM can, and most likely will, be written to Windows' swap file, which is on the hd, so traces of your activities can be found if an effort is made even after the machine is rebooted.
Ed
Get thinstall, but u need at least $5,000 U.S dollars or use mojopac which u can install programs that run in a virtual "Computer"
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi,
Indian political and spiritual leader (1869 - 1948)
One can encrypt files without Admin privileges. It is only the on-the-fly disk volume encryption that requires Admin to install a driver.
The same applies to Mojopac; it needs admin (or an installed driver) to run.
Even Mojopac is not completely self-contained or "armored". All the files and personal data are there on the removable drive for anything on the host PC to copy, change, or delete.
Thinstall, likewise, has to put its data somewhere. By default it is in Appdata, but one can have it write to its own folder on the removable drive. The point is that files and folders it creates, even if redirected to the removable drive, are accessible to any process running on the host PC. It is nice in that it gives the user a self-contained and customizable environment, but it is not armored or firewalled completely from things running on the host PC.
GoPC might be an option for anonymous surfing, since its environment is running on another machine (server) and you are only opening a viewport to it. But for most personal work on a relatively trustworthy host PC, PortableApps work well and clean up after themselves, so you can keep your personal data personal and with you.
MC
If you don't want to pay and simply wish to use a self-configured firewall, try FirewallPAPI(opensource at sourceforge.net). Alternatively, you could use Winpooch(another opensource project with a bigger community), which isn't exactly a firewall, but you can configure it to ask you every time if any process tries to modify or even just read a file in a specific folder or drive. A portable version is released at WinPenPack: currently X-Winpooch 0.6.6 [rev3], which isn't unfortunately opensource. However, some of our community are trying to make a similar thing opensource: portable Winpooch? : Anti-spyware, associates with ClamWin AV
since firewall running on the same system which it suppose to prevent is just a joke anyway.
Some firewall is in most windows installations anyway, and anything more is making the system more exposed to attacks then it would be without such bloatware like all those software jokes called 'personal firewall ' or what ever.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland