Portable Apps, a Testimonial — June 3, 2008

Tags: portable, PortableApps, software

I am an all-time portable app user. If there is a portable app version of a software package I like, I’d go for it rather than the installer package. Most of these applications are easy to use, free or open source and well written. What most users don’t realize about portable apps is that they do not require a portable USB drive or a portable hard disk to work with; they work like any other regular windows application. So this post is in a way, a testimonial on portable apps and how I use them to ease the burden in reinstalling applications on Windows machines.

Usage

My preferred way of using portable apps is to use them on a different partition where I usually keep my documents, music and other stuff. I use the PortableApps Suite that has the well designed start menu like UI. There are three flavors to the PortableApps Suite installer and my choice is the Platform Only edition as it is all what’s required if you prefer to hand-pick the software titles that will be installed later on.

Organization

The PortableApps Suite installer creates two folders (Documents and PortableApps), an executable called StartPortableApps.exe and an Autorun.ini file on the root folder of the partition.

The Documents folder is similar to the Windows My Documents folder and has three sub directories for Music, Pictures and Videos. This is where I keep all my files, music and videos. You can also point your Windows My Documents folder to this folder so that when you save in My Documents, you are really saving instead here.

The PortableApps folder is where the apps are installed. This folder will grow as you install applications. All portable apps are installed in a sub directory under this directory. If you ever need to uninstall an app, just remove the relevant folder from this directory.

The StartPortableApps.exe is the application that initiates the PortableApps Menu. If you install the suite on a portable device (such as a USB Pen Drive) the Autorun.ini file will make sure that this file will run automatically when you connect the device to your computer. Since I’m installing this on a fixed device I make a link to the StartPortableApps.exe on my desktop and run it every time I start Windows. The PortableApps Menu puts an icon on the system tray and hence you access your favorite portable applications.

Advantages and Disadvantages

Most portable apps do not use the Windows registry. They save settings on a file on their own folder. This is a key feature of portability. The other main feature is that they have minimal disk utilization. This makes the applications run slightly faster than their counterparts.

A major disadvantage is security. The partition you have selected to install portable apps may be accessible to others who have access to your machine and hence your files are exposed. This is not a major issue if you are the only person who’s using the computer or you have set proper privileges to prevent others from accessing the partition. You may also go that extra mile and use TrueCrypt to create an encrypted volume so your data is totally out of sight for others.

Conclusion

Life becomes a lot easier when using portable apps since managing your favorite software and files becomes a matter of copying and pasting. Although I have written this post with Windows is mind, please note that most portable apps have Mac and UNIX distributions. The list shown below is my favorite set of portable apps.

• AbiWord Portable
• Audacity Portable
• InfraRecorder Portable
• Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition
• Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition
• Notepad++ Portable
• Pidgin Portable
• PNotes Portable
• Sumatra PDF Portable
• ToDoList
• VLC Media Player Portable
• WinMerge Portable
• WinSCP Portable
• WordWeb Portable

Mini FAQ

What if I want to use the same set of portable apps at home?

Copy the folder PortableApps along with the StartPortableApps.exe to your home machine. Use a partition that is not the system partition to prevent data loss in the case of a reinstallation.

How easy is it to install a new portable application?

Open the PortableApps Menu and select ‘Options -> Install a New App’. If you manually copy the application folder inside the PortableApps folder then select ‘Options -> Refresh App Icons’; the PortableApps Menu will pick up the newly installed/copied application and show it in the list.

What if I want to move all the content on this partition to another partition? Will portable apps still work?

Yes. Almost all portable apps use relative paths to store data and do not depend on where you save files. Just copy the contents of your entire partition to the new partition and run the StartPortableApps.exe from the new location and you are good to go.

I reinstalled Windows. Do I have to reinstall PortableApps Suite?

No. Just run the StartPortableApps.exe on the portable apps partition. For convenience you can create a shortcut on your desktop to this file.

Do I really have to use the PortableApps Suite Menu?

No. The PortableApps Suite Menu is just a launcher application with a few other handy features (like backup/restore) to make your life easier. You can absolutely be on your own and run individual apps by going in to the relevant folder.