[dizzy4]

As was said before, http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ is a great resource. I had Ubuntu 7.10 on a 1gb flash drive for EXACTLY the same purpose you are looking to do. To be honest, the flash drive was fast enough and the portability was awesome. OOo came with the distro and was part of the install. As far as the process to make an Ubuntu flash drive, it is easy. You just make 2 partitons, one of which is for the live CD files to be coppied to and the other to be the persistent partition. It took me all of 20 minutes just to make it. Also with 4gb you have more than enough space left to store files.

In fact, I think I might make a new one right now!