{"id":617,"date":"2007-09-19T23:12:26","date_gmt":"2007-09-19T15:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/http:\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/archives\/2007\/09\/2007_09_19_2312.php"},"modified":"2007-09-19T23:12:26","modified_gmt":"2007-09-19T15:12:26","slug":"portable-apps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2007\/09\/19\/portable-apps","title":{"rendered":"Portable Apps"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\"\"<\/a>\n<\/div>\n

Ever since I got my new, sexy 8GB USB flash drive<\/a>, I’ve been into the whole “portable apps” scene.<\/p>\n\n

Portable Applications<\/em> are basically standalone applications; they are applications that are ready to run without having to install them. Obviously if you have a flash drive, you would want to have these little gems so you can have your useful applications with you all the time, ready to be run in any [supported] computer.<\/p>\n

Aside from the obvious benefit portable apps have for removable drive use, what I realized is that I find them ideal to use even on a local<\/em> environment. In fact, I can go as far as to say that I wish all<\/strong> applications were portable in nature, and I’ll tell you why…<\/p>\n

Consider This…<\/h2>\n

I have a triple<\/strong>-boot scenario in my computer; with three redundant installs of windows in my machine (two installations of XP and one Vista installation). One of the major nuances I quickly realized is that it’s such a waste of space<\/em> (not to mention a pain in the ass) to install multiple instances of the same software on all three OS installations.<\/p>\n

As I said, one partition is for my Digital Audio Workstation<\/em> (DAW) so I have my audio software installed there. No problem, it’s the only partition that I’ll have to install ANY audio software I have. I also have the XP installation for my work (as well as a game drive). So for the games part, obviously I would only install them in that partition; everything is still peachy.<\/p>\n

Now how about stuff like the Adobe Creative Suite. I could say that I use Flash, Photoshop, etc. for work, but that doesn’t<\/em> mean they’re used exclusively<\/strong> for work. Or here’s a better example: an office suite (e.g. Microsoft Office) to open those commonly available documents (word, powerpoint)<\/p>\n

So let’s consider Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office. I personally chose NOT to install them in the DAW partition since I want to keep that OS as “clean” as possible. But what about for Vista and the other XP installation? I’d have to install them twice<\/em>, configure them twice<\/em> for each system to probably the exact same settings I prefer to work with. Once can see how this redundancy can be a waste of space, especially<\/em> since these suite of applications take up a big chunk of hard drive space.<\/p>\n

Enter Portable Applications<\/h2>\n

As previously stated, portable apps are standalone<\/strong> applications; they need not be installed. What does this entail? You can have a SINGLE<\/strong> application for all<\/strong> your installations. Also, since their settings are usually<\/em> stored in the same folder (or a subfolder) relative to where the main app resides in, for the most part, it retains the settings regardless of where you’re running it from.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, there’s still no “portable MS Office 2007” or a “portable Adobe CS3,” but I have a bunch of applications which have portable versions of such as uTorrent<\/strong><\/em> (bittorrent), Firefox<\/strong><\/em> (browser), Trillian<\/strong><\/em> (multi-IM), FileZilla<\/strong><\/em> (FTP), FoxIt Reader<\/strong><\/em> (PDF reader), VLC<\/strong><\/em> (video\/media player), OpenOffice<\/strong><\/em> (just in case), etc. etc.<\/p>\n

The first four apps mentioned alone are a big deal in the “portable” perspective. You can access the same Firefox application from anywhere and still retain your bookmarks, same goes with Trillian and your contact list. I can resume my downloads regardless of what OS I boot into. Plus, I can now chat and surf while making music in the DAW partition.<\/p>\n

\n

So I have shortcuts on all three partitions pointing to a different partition which contains all these portable\/standalone applications. Would you believe I even have a portable Photoshop CS2? hahahaha. So yes, I have CS3 installed on two of the three partitions, but now I can do some quick graphics editing as well on the DAW partition if I wanted to.<\/p>\n

Furthermore I have all those Protable apps in a folder, which I synchronize with the Flash drive. So I always have a mirror copy of the latest “state” of the applications (and settings) even on my USB drive.<\/p>\n

You may be asking “Why the redundancy now; when the point of having portable apps is so you can have them consolidated in one place?”<\/em> The reason why I don’t use the flash drive when in the local machine is because USB is still slower than a native hard disk. So running an app like Trillian,<\/em> will perform considerably slower<\/strong> when running from a USB device.<\/p>\n

So if you share the same sentiment as I do, then you can get started right here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What about the Macs Users?<\/h2>\n

As Apple users know, you don’t need installers for most of the Mac applications. You simply drag them to your Applications<\/code> folder. Do not be misled however; these are not<\/strong> true portable applications. The settings\/preferences of these applications are stored in your ~\/Libarary\/Application Support<\/code> folder. So if you plunk them into your USB and run them in another Mac, it’ll be like running the app for the first time (no settings retained, etc.)<\/p>\n

However, don’t fret, there are also Portable Apps<\/a> available for Macs.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever since I got my new, sexy 8GB USB flash drive, I’ve been into the whole “portable apps” scene.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[282,302,715,942,1238,1260,1293,1319],"class_list":["post-617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-contour","tag-cruzer","tag-mac","tag-portable-apps","tag-usb","tag-vista","tag-windows","tag-xp"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}