Getting started with portable apps: it's still possible to keep your applications on removable
MANY OF THE APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE FOR MICROSOFT WINDOWS system and user interface software released in 1985 to run on top of MS-DOS. Widely criticised for being too slow (hence "Windoze", "Microsloth Windows") on the machines available then. , particularly the larger applications, such as office suites, are tightly locked to the specific machine on which they were installed. The reason for this is that much of their configuration information is stored in the Windows system registry. While you can install an application to an external drive, such as a USB drive A flash memory card that plugs into the computer's USB port. Small enough to hook onto a keychain, it emulates a small disk drive and allows data to be easily transferred from one machine to another. , if you move this drive to another system, this registry information will be missing and the application is likely to crash. This is not universal; you can still find applications that avoid using the registry that can be moved Between machines simply by copying their executable files over, but they are becoming harder to find.
In reaction to this, groups have sprung up with the specific objective of creating portable applications. As this frequently requires the modification of application code, this is most often done with open-source applications. A Web site particularly active in this is PortableApps.com, created by John T. Haller. He is the developer behind a number of portable applications, including Portable Firefox and Portable OpenOffice.org. The goal of the PortableApps.com Web site is to provide a centralized repository for multiple portable application development efforts.
What is a portable app?
While it might seem intuitively obvious, perhaps it's best to first look at what they mean by a portable app. They have only two requirements:
1. that it requires no special hardware to move from one machine to another
2. that no additional software is required to run the application under Microsoft Windows.
This basically reduces to downloading the application to any mobile storage device, be it a USB drive, a portable hard drive or even an MP3 player, such as an iPod. There are, of course, trade-offs with this approach. For example, the non-volatile memory used in USB USB
in full Universal Serial Bus
Type of serial bus that allows peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, digitizers, data gloves, etc.) to be easily connected to a computer. drives and many MP3 players has a limited life in terms of the number of times you can alter the value of a memory location. This means that, eventually, the device will 'wear out' However, with the number of rewrites over a million and the cost of 1 GByte devices frequently falling below $10, at least on rebate, this is not a serious tradeoff.
The variety of applications that have been customized to meet the portable app requirement covers the majority of business applications and a number of recreational ones. For example, office applications include OpenOffice.org Portable, on which I am currently writing this column, Sumatra PDF Sumatra PDF is a free, open source, light-weight PDF reader, written by Krzysztof Kowalczyk.
Sumatra PDF is composed from two parts:
* MuPDF- PDF library.
* Poppler - PDF library.
Portable and the Mozilla suite of portable products. The latter indudes Mozilla FireFox See Firefox. , Thunderbird thunderbird
In North American Indian mythology, a powerful spirit in the form of a bird that watered the earth and made vegetation grow. Lightning was believed to flash from its eyes or beak, and the beating of its wings was thought to represent rolling thunder. and Sunbird sunbird, common name for tropical, Old World birds, including more than one hundred species in the family Nectariniidae. Like the unrelated New World hummingbirds, to which sunbirds are often compared, sunbirds have long and slender, highly curved bills, tube-shaped , their Web browser The program that serves as your front end to the Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser's Location field; for example, www.computerlanguage.com, and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. , e-mail client and calendar system respectively. Other tools include instant messaging clients like Gaim Portable and Miranda Portable and games such as Sudoku Portable. Essential tools such as the ClamWin Portable anti-virus scanner and 7-Zip Portable file compression tool also are available. For those interested in audio and video, there is also Audacity Portable and vlc player download VLC media player is a free software media player by the VideoLAN project.
It is a highly portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. Portable.
Getting started
The easiest way to get started is to download and install one of the PortableApps Suites. There are three versions available: Standard (89.5 MB); Lite (30.4 MB); and Base (<1 MB). The Base version contains just the essential components, such as the menu system and backup tools. The primary difference between the Standard and Lite versions is that Standard includes the OpenOffice.org office suite, where the Lite version substitutes the AbiWord Portable word processor, which allows the suite to easily run from a 256 MB USB drive. Additional applications are easily downloaded and installed using the Options menu option on the PortableApps.com menu.
A caveat to remember is that, if you are attempting to run PortableApps.com on a pre-Windows XP system, you first have to run their 1.0 to 1.0.1 Patch to fix a bug in the PortableApps Menu, which prevents it from opening. Once that patch is run, you are good to go. To exit your session and remove your media device, remember to first shut down the PortableApps Menu from the task bar. If you are using a pre-XP system, be sure to shut down your drive using the Unplug or Eject Hardware applet as well. While some of the applications may have specific system requirements, the PortableApps.com Platform is designed to function on all versions of Microsoft Windows, from 95 through Vista. It can even be run under Linux/Unix using Wine.
* Portable Application Resources
LuLu www.lulu.com
O'Reilly and Associates www.oreilly.com
OpenOffice.org www.openoffice.org
PortableApps.com PortableApps.com
This is also an excellent tool for assuaging any anxiety you might feel for using open source tools. All of the applications that I've tried in the package have a very professional look and feel to them. In many cases, you'll find them clearly superior to commercial products for the same target market. The ability to keep your applications and assorted data files on removable media would be of benefit to anyone, but should have particular appeal to the road warriors out there.
Finding help
In tune with their professional polish, all of these applications come with extensive help files. This is particularly true with the OpenOffice.org applications. However, for anyone who has previously used word processors, whether it be Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect or another, using the basic functionality should be very intuitive. Full manuals for the various OpenOffice components can be downloaded from the OpenOffice.org Web site. Hardcopy versions can be ordered from the LuLu Web site. For those desiring more help with OpenOffice, Jean Hollis Weber's book OpenOffice.org Writer [O'Reilly and Associates, July 2004, ISBN ISBN
abbr.
International Standard Book Number
ISBN International Standard Book Number
ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) ? ISBN m : 0-596-00826-0, 234 pp] has an excellent reputation. While it targets version one of this product, much of its contents is also applicable to the version two of OpenOffice packaged in PortableApps.
Security
An additional item to take into account is file security. With the small physical size of USB drives these days, it can be very easy to lose a drive or accidentally leave it in a borrowed machine. Fortunately, most USB drives include software for encrypting the drive's memory. For those that don't, you can easily find a number of programs to do the same job floating on the Internet. While you can encrypt the whole drive, including the PortableApps applications, this will tend to slow the operation of the applications. In many cases, it may only be necessary to encrypt your document folders. This is an area where you will need to evaluate your needs and determine which tradeoffs make sense for you. Carefully considering this decision can help remove any remaining concerns you may have regarding the use of portable apps. SC
If you want to download VLC Media Player visit: vlc media player download
In reaction to this, groups have sprung up with the specific objective of creating portable applications. As this frequently requires the modification of application code, this is most often done with open-source applications. A Web site particularly active in this is PortableApps.com, created by John T. Haller. He is the developer behind a number of portable applications, including Portable Firefox and Portable OpenOffice.org. The goal of the PortableApps.com Web site is to provide a centralized repository for multiple portable application development efforts.
What is a portable app?
While it might seem intuitively obvious, perhaps it's best to first look at what they mean by a portable app. They have only two requirements:
1. that it requires no special hardware to move from one machine to another
2. that no additional software is required to run the application under Microsoft Windows.
This basically reduces to downloading the application to any mobile storage device, be it a USB drive, a portable hard drive or even an MP3 player, such as an iPod. There are, of course, trade-offs with this approach. For example, the non-volatile memory used in USB USB
in full Universal Serial Bus
Type of serial bus that allows peripheral devices (disks, modems, printers, digitizers, data gloves, etc.) to be easily connected to a computer. drives and many MP3 players has a limited life in terms of the number of times you can alter the value of a memory location. This means that, eventually, the device will 'wear out' However, with the number of rewrites over a million and the cost of 1 GByte devices frequently falling below $10, at least on rebate, this is not a serious tradeoff.
The variety of applications that have been customized to meet the portable app requirement covers the majority of business applications and a number of recreational ones. For example, office applications include OpenOffice.org Portable, on which I am currently writing this column, Sumatra PDF Sumatra PDF is a free, open source, light-weight PDF reader, written by Krzysztof Kowalczyk.
Sumatra PDF is composed from two parts:
* MuPDF- PDF library.
* Poppler - PDF library.
Portable and the Mozilla suite of portable products. The latter indudes Mozilla FireFox See Firefox. , Thunderbird thunderbird
In North American Indian mythology, a powerful spirit in the form of a bird that watered the earth and made vegetation grow. Lightning was believed to flash from its eyes or beak, and the beating of its wings was thought to represent rolling thunder. and Sunbird sunbird, common name for tropical, Old World birds, including more than one hundred species in the family Nectariniidae. Like the unrelated New World hummingbirds, to which sunbirds are often compared, sunbirds have long and slender, highly curved bills, tube-shaped , their Web browser The program that serves as your front end to the Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser's Location field; for example, www.computerlanguage.com, and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. , e-mail client and calendar system respectively. Other tools include instant messaging clients like Gaim Portable and Miranda Portable and games such as Sudoku Portable. Essential tools such as the ClamWin Portable anti-virus scanner and 7-Zip Portable file compression tool also are available. For those interested in audio and video, there is also Audacity Portable and vlc player download VLC media player is a free software media player by the VideoLAN project.
It is a highly portable multimedia player, encoder, and streamer supporting many audio and video codecs and file formats as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. Portable.
Getting started
The easiest way to get started is to download and install one of the PortableApps Suites. There are three versions available: Standard (89.5 MB); Lite (30.4 MB); and Base (<1 MB). The Base version contains just the essential components, such as the menu system and backup tools. The primary difference between the Standard and Lite versions is that Standard includes the OpenOffice.org office suite, where the Lite version substitutes the AbiWord Portable word processor, which allows the suite to easily run from a 256 MB USB drive. Additional applications are easily downloaded and installed using the Options menu option on the PortableApps.com menu.
A caveat to remember is that, if you are attempting to run PortableApps.com on a pre-Windows XP system, you first have to run their 1.0 to 1.0.1 Patch to fix a bug in the PortableApps Menu, which prevents it from opening. Once that patch is run, you are good to go. To exit your session and remove your media device, remember to first shut down the PortableApps Menu from the task bar. If you are using a pre-XP system, be sure to shut down your drive using the Unplug or Eject Hardware applet as well. While some of the applications may have specific system requirements, the PortableApps.com Platform is designed to function on all versions of Microsoft Windows, from 95 through Vista. It can even be run under Linux/Unix using Wine.
* Portable Application Resources
LuLu www.lulu.com
O'Reilly and Associates www.oreilly.com
OpenOffice.org www.openoffice.org
PortableApps.com PortableApps.com
This is also an excellent tool for assuaging any anxiety you might feel for using open source tools. All of the applications that I've tried in the package have a very professional look and feel to them. In many cases, you'll find them clearly superior to commercial products for the same target market. The ability to keep your applications and assorted data files on removable media would be of benefit to anyone, but should have particular appeal to the road warriors out there.
Finding help
In tune with their professional polish, all of these applications come with extensive help files. This is particularly true with the OpenOffice.org applications. However, for anyone who has previously used word processors, whether it be Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect or another, using the basic functionality should be very intuitive. Full manuals for the various OpenOffice components can be downloaded from the OpenOffice.org Web site. Hardcopy versions can be ordered from the LuLu Web site. For those desiring more help with OpenOffice, Jean Hollis Weber's book OpenOffice.org Writer [O'Reilly and Associates, July 2004, ISBN ISBN
abbr.
International Standard Book Number
ISBN International Standard Book Number
ISBN n abbr (= International Standard Book Number) ? ISBN m : 0-596-00826-0, 234 pp] has an excellent reputation. While it targets version one of this product, much of its contents is also applicable to the version two of OpenOffice packaged in PortableApps.
Security
An additional item to take into account is file security. With the small physical size of USB drives these days, it can be very easy to lose a drive or accidentally leave it in a borrowed machine. Fortunately, most USB drives include software for encrypting the drive's memory. For those that don't, you can easily find a number of programs to do the same job floating on the Internet. While you can encrypt the whole drive, including the PortableApps applications, this will tend to slow the operation of the applications. In many cases, it may only be necessary to encrypt your document folders. This is an area where you will need to evaluate your needs and determine which tradeoffs make sense for you. Carefully considering this decision can help remove any remaining concerns you may have regarding the use of portable apps. SC
If you want to download VLC Media Player visit: vlc media player download
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