Portable Apps

[Ginafish]

After reading another thread, my hubby got all excited and started to describe to me a website I had to post for you all.

With jump drives becoming larger and more available, a market has opened for "Portable Apps" so that you don't have to install the software on a computer, but instead on your jump drive, to ensure that whatever computer you use, your programs can be opened the way you want them to.

So here you go: FREE Portable Apps!

Enjoy!

[thartley]

I am soooo gonna have to check that out!  I just reformatted on of my harddrives and I always use a Ghost image to reload from that I have saved out on a separate dive, and I was JUST arguing the fact with a tech support friend of mine that you would think they would have come up with something exactly like this by now.

I cant wait to e-mail him the link!!!  LOL!!  He told me it couldnt be done.

[Hunter]

Thartley!! I'm saddened. I could have told you that!

Now, to kind of bring to light some problems here. I don't like portable apps. They have a good idea, but it doesn't work as well as it could. Also, for PortableApps to start up when you put your usb drive in your computer, you do have to load a file onto your computer. This isn't really a problem, but there are 2 things. 1) You loose your privacy by leaving a foot print on any computer you use. 2) You'll find that the programs that you wanted to start-on-load don't because they are missing that file.

Now. If you absolutely love the idea of PortableApps, that's great. i would advise you get a U3 USB drive, since they also allow you to use an antivirus.

If you don't love the idea of a PortableApps or any other program that limits the abilities of your USB drive, check out the sites below.

PenDriveApps
The Portable Freeware Collection
Everything USB (I don't suggest these only because they cost money, but if you don't mind the price they could be good)
Make Use Of...
osxportableapps(for Macs only)

You'll notice a lot of the sites have the same things. There aren't as many portable programs out there as there are regular programs. That being said, any program that doesn't need to be installed, merely run, can be used on an USB drive.

Also, for Thartley, you can set up an USB drive to be a sort of emergency drive for your computer. Depending upon the size (+1GB is preferable) you can load an entire operating system on it, sucessfully allowing you to take you "computer" anywhere.

Windows XP
ngine
Tech Republic

Mac
Old Mac
New Mac (OS X)
Mac Geek
Brad Bergeron

Linux (linux is easy!)
Soylink
Linux USB

In all honest there are so many Linux on usb guides that it would be frivolous to attempt to put them all on here.

Anyway hope that helps open your eyes to the true abilities of USB thumb/pen/jump-drive.

There are some cautions. These drives will NEVER (in this incarnation) last as long as your hard drive. Make sure you make back ups. The more you use them the more likely they'll fail. Not necessarily in like 5 times, but a million reads adds up quickly. Just for your sakes, back up all of your important data. if nothing else, create an image on a cd or dvd of your jumpdrive so you can restore it to a new one when yours dies. Just to be safe.

Enjoy!

Hunter.

[thartley]

Thanks Hunter...

If I could have gotten online to ask, I prob would have.