Portable Applications - Carry 'em around in your pocket!

Ever fancied carrying around your favourite applications, say on a USB pen drive or even an iPod, so you don't have to rely on whatever potential junk is on the machine you get to sit at? e.g. at your friends house, a hotdesk at work or in an internet cafe! It could also be a lifesaver where you don't have install permissions on the computer although, being a systems administrator, I would never condone such an action if it subverted any company software policies.

Like the idea? Okay, it'll never happen with behemoth-like commercial software like Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop but some enterprising developers have been hard at work and have produced versions of popular, free internet applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, OpenOffice and Nvu for just such a purpose.

Open source is the key here and that basically allows any developer to modify the code to suit their own purposes and the best bit for us users is, it's all free! Seriously, the quality of open source software has improved greatly and it's now perfectly feasable to "just say no!" to high-cost commercial products from companies like Microsoft or Adobe.

Windows users can download about 18 portable applications, including Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP. OpenOffice and Nvu, from PortableApps.com, while Mac OS X users can also download 18, including those above, from FreeSMUG, the Free Opensource Software Mac User Group.

Originally posted to The Jumbled Box, 1/2/2006