PortableApps

USB flash drives are now pervasive as they are a convenient way to carry around large amounts of data. I will be travelling soon and used this as a reason to update my PortableApps installation on my flash drive.

PortableApps is a freww application, ideal for the user who wants to bring their computing environment along with them on a flash drive. I like to have OpenOffice, Firefox, music player, ssh and a few other applications with me at all times along with some of my data such as powerpoint slides for presentations, address book etc.

All of the above is made easy with PortableApps. If I need to use a machine which is not my own, all I have to do is to plug in my flash drive and all my preloaded applications are available. In addition, the applications are configured to save data and settings back to the thumb drive (without leaving anything on the host computer). This means that you will not accidentally leave private or confidential information on the host machine.

The following applications are included by default:

• Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition (web browser)
• Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition (email)
• Mozilla Sunbird, Portable Edition (calendar/tasks)
• ClamWin Portable (antivirus)
• Pidgin Portable (instant messaging)
• Sumatra PDF Portable (PDF reader
• KeePass Password Safe Portable (password manager)
• Sudoku Portable (game)
• Mines-Perfect Portable (game)
• CoolPlayer+ Portable (audio player)
• OpenOffice.org Portable (office suite)
  - Writer (word processor)
  - Calc (spreadsheet)
  - Impress (presentations)
  - Base (database utility)
  - Draw (drawing)

PortableApps allows other applications to be added on top of the base ones and I have included:

• 7-zip (compression software)
• Audacity (audio editor and recorder)
• BonkEnc (extract, convert and encode audio)
• Eraser (securely erase files)
• GIMP (photo and image editor)
• InfraRecorder (CD/DVD burner)
• Putty (ssh client)
• Toucan (backup, sync and encrypt)
• VLC media player (play videos)
• WinSCP (sftp, ftp and scp)

Overall, if you want a nice suite of tools to keep with you on your flash drive, PortableApps is highly recommended.