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InD: 10 Great Examples to Help You Get Started with Portable Apps
Yesterday, we highlighted how you can easily synchronize your portable applications and all of their settings without the need for a USB flash drive. But, allow us to take a step back in this Fans of Tech “InDepth” article and answer the more blatant questions at hand: "what exactly is a ‘portable’ application?" and "why would I want to use one?"
Essentially, a portable app is one that’s specifically designed to run anywhere (even from a CD/DVD) as well as keep all of its settings (in most instances) right along with the executable itself.
There are plenty of great reasons to opt for a portable application as opposed to an installer-based application. Among them being:
- easy transferrance of those programs and their customized settings to a new PC
- less hard drive clutter. (A typical installer-based application can leave footprints in the following areas of your Windows PC: the registry, the "program files" folder, multiple areas within the "documents and settings" folder, the start menu, the desktop, and sometimes even your "my documents" folder.)
Now, if you’re new to the whole concept of portable apps, and even if you’re not, there are a few out there (10 to be precise) that you simply must download. (Note: all of the ones listed below are 100% free.)
First up is 7-Zip Portable, an open-source program that allows you to both create and extract a multitude of archive types including .zip, .rar, .tar, .gzip and more.
Next, we have Audacity. Also open-source, Audacity allows you to create and edit MP3 and WAV files whilst on-the-go. This one has come in handy plenty of times for personal and professional projects. (I also use Audacity to drop in MP3s from my music collection and snip them in order to create ringtones for my Windows Mobile phone.)
Dee Burner, as you might have guessed by its name, is a portable CD and DVD burner. With it, you can burn both data (bootable option included) and audio CDs and DVDs in addition to ISO image files. (There is a professional version, currently not available as a portable edition, that enables some advanced functionality including DVD video creation and disk-to-disk copying.)
Driver Magician Lite enables you to, with just a few clicks, automatically backup all drivers for any component inside, or attached to, your PC. As is the case with Deep Burner, there is a professional version of Driver Magician that enables automatic restoration of the drivers you back up. With the lite version, restoration of your drivers is manual. Of course, in the event that you do reload your operating system from scratch, the OS is going to detect and automatically install the vast majority of your drivers; leaving only a few that will require manual configuration.
FastStone Capture is an extremely lightweight application designed to sit in your sytem tray and provide you with a multitude of screen capture options. This application eventually became shareware and now requires a purchase. However, the last version that was available as freeware, v5.3, is still available for download. The download link on portablefreeware.com, however, did not work but I was able to find the .zip file containing the portable version of FastStone Capture v5.3 over at Ovi.com (courtesy of user paul75.) Do a virus-check on this one, people. I didn’t have any issues with it but just be smart.
FileZilla is an, nay, THE open-source FTP client and is a must if you deal with your own site, a friend’s site, a site for a family member or, for you freelancers out there, client sites.
PC Decrapifier is an application designed to help you eliminate some of the applications that come pre-loaded on consumer-level PCs. (This bloatware is even starting to show up more and more on business-class PCs as well. Thanks HP.) On the same note, I highly recommend the portable version of CCleaner (previously named Crap Cleaner) which also helps you rid your PC of unnecessary bloat - but on a much wider scale.
PDF-XChange Viewer is a portable PDF viewer that also enables some more Acrobat-esque features like comments/annotations, the typewriter tool, stamps and more. (You’ve actually got a few options for portable PDF-viewing including Sumatra PDF Portable and Foxit Reader.)
The widely-applauded Q10 is also available as a portable application and provides you with a fantastic environment in which to write. It’s great for ADD-prone authors who can easily find themselves distracted by instant messages, Windows notifications and that ever-infamous scourge of evil/brilliance: the Web browser. I highly encourage you to read more about Q10 here if you haven’t done so already. (I’m using it now and while I’ve already spent an unnecessary 2 hours writing this post, it would probably be 3 or 4 without Q10.)
USB Disk Ejector. If you don’t already know what this does by the name of the application then I don’t even know who you are anymore. However, if you find yourself frustrated by the built-in USB "Safe Removal" feature in Windows (including Vista), then this app is for you.
There are the more basic portable apps, like those maintained at PortableApps.com, that you’ll also want to download. However, I wanted to highlight a few that you may not be aware of but that may, in fact, be as equally useful.
Also remember to check out yesterday’s post on how you can easily synchronize a folder containing your portable apps/settings across multiple PCs.
The majority of the apps highlighted in this article came directly from PortableApps.com and PortableFreeware.com. In addition, Lifehacker and Download Squad tend to do a good job at highlighting some excellent portable applications every now and then.
You might be thinking of a few apps that we definitely should have included in this article. If that’s the case, drop us a line in the comments. Odds are, this won’t be the only portable apps-based post we deliver so we’ll definitely try to share your suggestions with readers in the next one.
