Truecrypt - Encryption

This FREE encryption program is great for protecting your data against anybody that desire your data in your computer, external hard drive, or thumb drive. You say, why do I need this? Let say you have a personal laptop with all your private information and you lose it in a taxi, airport, and etc, I wonder what will happen to your information. You say, your laptop is password protected, great, it'll take an amateur couple of minute to break it. But you say, how safe is Truecrypt in protecting my data? Truecrypt encryption algorithms runs on AES-256, Sepent, and Twofish, which are used by the military and government agencies.

Another scenario, you bought a 8 GB thumb drive and loaded with whole bunch of porn or other embarrassing pictures and video and guess who found it on the living room floor, your mom or wife. To be fair to the guys, your dad or husband. Now, if it was encrypted, no worry and this would work on desktop computer too. But you say, how am I going to use my thumb drive or external hard drive on a different computer such as office, friends home, and etc? Great question, the answer is portable mode, which mean you carry the program with you on the thumb drive or external hard drive.
I been using Truecrypt (portable mode) for my thumb drives for several months, carrying family personal information. I feel confident that if I loose my thumb drive, I won't have to worry about my data falling into the wrong people.

Excerpt from http://www.truecrypt.org/

Main Features:

-Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.
-Encrypts an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive or hard drive.
-Encrypts a partition or drive where Windows is installed (pre-boot authentication).
-Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.
-Parallelization and pipelining allow data to be read and written as fast as if the drive was not encrypted.
-Provides plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password: Hidden volume (steganography) and hidden operating system.
-Encryption algorithms: AES-256, Serpent, and Twofish. Mode of operation: XTS.

On the site it says it support Windows XP and VISTA and no mentioning of Windows 7. I have tried it on Windows 7 and it works fine. Don't pay $20-$100 on thumb drives that comes with encryption when you can get it for FREE. Also, if you use VISTA and Windows 7, it come with encryption program called Bitlocker and I believe it is only provided on Professional and Ultima versions (please correct me if I'm wrong). I have Windows 7 Ultima and it will encrypt internal and external hard drives and thumb drive. I have not used it so I can't really talk about it; maybe somebody out there can shed some light on the bitlocker capability.