 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
JL, 03 December 2006 Portable Apps
I stayed
up most
of last night enthralled with my discovery
of Portable Apps. These are applications that
can be
carried on any kind of portable device - USB key, external
hard-drive, iPod, etc. requiring no installation in your operating
system. Un-installing is as simple as deleting the folders they live
in. These are not
mini-versions of your software, they're the real deal, just as
they exist on your hard-drive.Today I explored more of them. There's a good list at Nedwolf although it hasn't been updated for over a year. And the Portable Freeware Collection. One can only hope all good software will eventually have a portable version. How about it Legacy? A couple of my desirables are only available on U3 now and one would wonder if that's also the wave of the future: portable apps for sale and only workable on new fangled hardware. For now there are dozens for free and they don't require any special versions of hardware. PortableApps is the best-of-the-best in portable OpenSource programming. This is how a menu would appear on the desktop of any host computer:  I've put mine on
my external
hard-drive. The apps themselves will fit easily on my 1GB USB key,
but the ext HD has all my documents, about 65 GB worth. Should I
decide to go visiting and not want to carry my laptop, I can just
toss my little hard-drive in my pocket and plug in over at my
friends' with all these apps, personal settings and personal
documents on board. When I unplug, my work leaves no trace on their
computer.
If you don't have a laptop and travel between work and home desktops, or find yourself wishing you had your computer around a lot of times when you don't, you'll find this even more useful. It's brilliant. Have a look if you haven't yet. 12 January 2007 Nice
blog.
If
you liked Portable Apps, you might
find MojoPac intriguing (www.mojopac.com)
I have Legacy Family Tree running on a 512MB thumb drive.
Apps
do not have to be written to run
under MojoPac, unlike U3 or Ceedo.
The
biggest drawback is that it will
only run if the person logged in on the host PC has administrator
rights. This most likely precludes you using it on a PC at
your local library or genealogical society, (unless you bring your
laptop) but it is great for taking Legacy along to a friend's
or relative's house for instance, and running it from their PC.
|
