Free

PortableApps – your digital life, anywhere

Looking for a good use for all those extra USB memory sticks you have floating around your apartment?  Are you tired of using computers that don’t have the programs installed that you need?  PortableApps has your solution!  You install the programs you want to use onto a portable memory stick and use that memory stick to run those programs on any computer you want.

The program itself is very easy to install.  Plug your memory stick into your computer and download the software package.  You have a few choices of initial installation.  You can install only the PortableApps platform and then download and install the programs you want separately.  You can also download their compiled software packages.  The software packages come put together for 256mb and 512mb memory sticks but I would recommend using at least a 1gb memory stick  so that you have room to save files as well as install additional software.

Once the application is installed onto your memory stick you can have it run whenever your memory stick is inserted into a computer.  It will open up the PortableApp icon in the notification area in the lower right corner of your screen.  Once clicked this icon will open up the PortableApp launcher.  From the launcher you can run any of your installed programs as well as close PortableApps and eject the drive.  You can even have the launcher automatically change the computer background while your memory stick is plugged in.  (do this by saving the image file as Drive:DocumentsPicturesportableapps_wallpaper.bmp)

There are a number of free portable programs that you can download and install on your memory stick.  These include:  OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, Pidgin and more.  These programs can allow you to:  edit any document you need anywhere you go,  install the firefox plugins you want and take your internet bookmarks everywhere, access your email, edit photos on any computer and run your messaging service any time.  There are even more programs you can download that will let you access FTP servers, run virus scans, play and edit multimedia files, open and compress ZIP and RAR files, manage your passwords, edit web pages and defragment your hard drive.  If that’s not enough you can search the internet and find just about any utility you might need on the go.

Since I have setup my PortableApp drive I use it on a daily basis.  I setup the memory utility on my cell phone to run PortableApps whenever I plug it in to the USB charger.  It helps me keep all my necessairy programs and utilities with me wherever I go.  Its also an excellent tool to help with computer diagnosis and repair.  Now that I have had a taste of portable software freedom I don’t know if I could live without it.

Resources:
Operating System – Any
Developer – Rare Ideas, LLC
PortableApp Website
Download PortableApp Platform
Download Additional Portable Programs

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