Portable Applications

August 4, 20107 comments

It is common place in most offices to have administrative priviledges removed from end-user PCs. This is usually done to prevent unauthorised installation of softwares or hardwares on such PCs. Unauthorised software installation is usually a primary source of introduction of malicious softwares that may cripple a computer network.

This write-up may seem like a FOR-TECHIES-ONLY, a little patience please.

I had come across Portable softwares a number of times before now but i never really paid much attention to them. But on EYEBEEKAY’s insistence, i decided to surf the web to check out what it’s all about. Man, i sure have been missing a lot! I have decided to summarize my findings in this short write-up.

Portable applications or Portable apps, as they are commonly known, are not much different from your regular softwares. Wikipaedia defines a portable app as a computer software program that is able to run independently without the need to install files to the system it is run upon. They are commonly preinstalled on removable storage devices such as USB flash drive or CDs (For those have their USB ports locked down).

Almost any application can be made portable, some with greater difficulty while a few cannot because of their high dependence on system resources.Luckily, most basic softwares that we all use on a regular basis are portable.

Yeah, Portable, but why go portable?

– Bypass administrative level restriction. Use your regular softwares on any PC anytime, anywhere.
– Reduce the clogging up of your computer registry, a primary cause of system instability.It leaves a Zero, or near zero registry footprint.
– Have all your regular applications available for use on any PC, saving time on the installation of the same softwares on every PC you use.

So, how do we create portable apps? Well, there’s a little problem there. There are a few softwares that can be used to convert  applications to portable formats and VMWARE’s THINAPP is probably the best to achieve this but with a stunning and shocking price tag of about US$5000, God Have Mercy! Another alternative is Xenocode ($1599). Make your choice.

For now, we will limit ourselves to ready-made portable apps. A very good repository can be found on Portableapps. Others include Techsupportalert, Appstogo and Portablefreeware

Contributions anyone? Eyebeekay, you started this.

Omowe

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