Looking for better USB drive wallet solution other than Electrum

[unclemantis]

I am looking for a USB drive wallet solution that doesn't rely on the download of the entire chain and I am able to insert usb drive, make payments, pull it out and go on my way quickly.

Electrum was a cool solution but lately their servers have not been up when I needed them to be.

Also I do NOT want a web wallet!

[Revalin]

http://bitcoinarmory.com/

[unclemantis]

http://bitcoinarmory.com/

Does the program require the blockchain to be synced up before payments can be made?

[unclemantis]

Looking for something that does NOT require Bitcoind.

[Revalin]

Hm, I thought that it had the ability to sync to a random node.  I guess not.  Sorry. 

[gweedo]

Armory requires bitcoin-qt or bitcoind to run, I would use http://multibit.org/ since it is written in java, doesn't need the whole blockchain and has a wealth of functionality.

[JompinDox]

Armory requires bitcoin-qt or bitcoind to run, I would use http://multibit.org/ since it is written in java, doesn't need the whole blockchain and has a wealth of functionality.

BUT no encryption for wallet!

[unclemantis]

Armory requires bitcoin-qt or bitcoind to run, I would use http://multibit.org/ since it is written in java, doesn't need the whole blockchain and has a wealth of functionality.

BUT no encryption for wallet!

I have my USB drive encrypted so that is not a complete letdown.

Not a bad idea for the future though!

[jim618]

There is a 'how-to' for running multibit from a USB drive here:

http://multibit.org/help_runFromUSBDrive.html

Fair point on the wallet encryption.
It is coming - I have all the GUI work done and a proposed KDF/ encryption routine but there still a fair bit to do yet.

[gweedo]

Armory requires bitcoin-qt or bitcoind to run, I would use http://multibit.org/ since it is written in java, doesn't need the whole blockchain and has a wealth of functionality.

BUT no encryption for wallet!

I have my USB drive encrypted so that is not a complete letdown.

Not a bad idea for the future though!

get portable truecrypt and encrypted the whole USB partition

[TheButterZone]

PPC Macs are SOL for Multibit, because AFAIK, Apple doesn't support 10.6 or 10.7 on PPC. To use a bootable distro with Electrum or just about any secure client, you need Intel.

[jim618]

PPC Macs are SOL for Multibit, because AFAIK, Apple doesn't support 10.6 or 10.7 on PPC. To use a bootable distro with Electrum or just about any secure client, you need Intel.

It is veering a bit off topic, but Multibit needs Java 6 (or higher) to run which was never formally released for PPC.
According to this URL it sounds like it might be possible to get Java 7 running on PPC:
http://javaevangelist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/openjdk-7-on-apple-g5-powerpc-on-mac-os.html?m=1

I have not tried it mind as I do not have the kit.

[gweedo]

PPC Macs are SOL for Multibit, because AFAIK, Apple doesn't support 10.6 or 10.7 on PPC. To use a bootable distro with Electrum or just about any secure client, you need Intel.

It is veering a bit off topic, but Multibit needs Java 6 (or higher) to run which was never formally released for PPC.
According to this URL it sounds like it might be possible to get Java 7 running on PPC:
http://javaevangelist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/openjdk-7-on-apple-g5-powerpc-on-mac-os.html?m=1

I have not tried it mind as I do not have the kit.

Any Mac under snow leopard doesn't have java 6

[jim618]

According to this URL it is on one of their updates:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33087/apple-java-for-mac-os-x-10.6/

Java 6 was released Dec 2006 so anything relatively modern should have it (or a later version). 

[unclemantis]

According to this URL it is on one of their updates:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/33087/apple-java-for-mac-os-x-10.6/

Java 6 was released Dec 2006 so anything relatively modern should have it (or a later version). 

So far so good. Now if I could only figure out why my computer is locking up with the usb drive and why some software is not working and I will be good.

USB drive works fine on other computers.

[TheButterZone]

<G4 PPC Mac Mini, OSX 10.5. Pretty sure I can't upgrade it any higher, only upgrade from it to an Intel MM.