Portable Apps

Convenient
Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind.

Open
PortableApps.com provides a truly open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). It's open source built around an open format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use.

Free
The Portable Apps Suite™ is free. It contains no spyware. There are no advertisements. It isn't a limited or trial version. There is no additional hardware or software to buy. You don't even have to give out your email address. It's 100% free to use, free to copy and free to share.

This site is dedicated to the collection and cataloging of Windows freeware that can be extracted to any directory and run independently without prior installation. These can be carried around on a memory stick / USB flash drive, or copied / migrated from PC to PC via simple copying of files.

A guide to very small software for your PC.

Handy programs to put on a USB stick.

Dirk Loss' list of useful utilities that can be run directly from CD-ROM (or USB stick) and meet these requirements:

• Must be available free of charge (at least for non-commercial use). If source code is available under a Free Software/Open Source license, that's even better.
• Small is beautiful
• Graphical user interfaces are nice (this is Windows after all...;-)
• Focus is on diagnostic, network and security tools (no games or MP3 players...)

Imagine carrying a portable security suite with you wherever you go. Walk up to any computer, quickly scan it for viruses, and then defeat any internet access blocks to view any website you want anonymously. It’s here, and the DemocraKey 2.0 Lite let’s you have it on your iPod.

YamiPod is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod under Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation.

Software, Tools, and Utils for your USB Drive.

This only works with Skype 1.4 and above, and only on Windows (well I'm guessing this because I can't test the mac version)

• Download Skype and install it on any computer.
• Find the Skype.exe from where it was installed.
  (Usually C:\Program Files\Skype\Phone\Skype.exe )
• Copy the Skype.exe file to any directory on your USB Drive
• In that new directory create a directory called "data"
• Now create a file (with notepad) called "skype.bat"
• Edit the "skype.bat" file and place the following line there:
  skype.exe /datapath:"Data" /removable

You're set.

Just clicking on that batch file will make skype start, it'll be different version that any skype installed on the computer you're at, and will even run if skype isn't installed on that computer.

App Launcher will launch up to 6 applications from your usb drive.

Portable Python is a Python® programming language preconfigured to run directly from a portable device, enabling you to have, at any time, portable programming environment. Just download and extract to your portable device and in 10 minutes you are ready to create your next Python® application.

The GVim Portable Launcher allows you to run GVim from a removable drive whose letter changes as you move it to another computer. The program can be entirely self-contained on the drive and then used on any Microsoft Windows computer.

A Trail by rowancook.