argh! Bitlocker/Win7 and the desktop/usb

So my office now has bitlocker on all laptops, and remote drives that you may plug in, and it encrypts the usb key so it is read only unless you decrypt it. I am not super familiar with bitlocker, but what happens if I take my usb portable apps and put it on the harddrive, would it still be encrypted? Would it ask for the password?
I'll be checking with my IT folks, but I figure some folks may be interested or know of similar situations.
Also, IT says that I have to use Win7 pc's now, not Macs as bitlocker doesn't work with them, and there is a buggy add-on for the winXPs.

This seriously hinders my portability.