Portable Software
***Article Updated June 14, 2007***
Why Use Portable Software?
This is a question that many people ask me when I talk about what I keep on my USB drives. The best answer I can give is this: I like to be able to use the same programs wherever I go.
I really like the convenience of being able to carry my browser with my bookmarks (and passwords!) with me instead of keying them in on someone else’s computer. I like having my preferred office suite (the OpenOffice.org project) available to me when I need it.
It’s also nice to have my music player and some songs to listen to while I am working. 
All software recommendations are programs that I am currently using. There might be “easier” or “better” software available, but THIS page will only show the stuff that I actually use.
If something doesn’t work for you, or is too cumbersome, then I encourage you to find something that you like better. The point of this page is to expose people to some interesting programs. If you don’t like a program or are uncomfortable using it, chances are you won’t use it and the convenience factor will be lost on you.
Please understand that I am not trying to lock anyone in to using any particular program. I would rather you look at the software I use and tailor the programs to fit your specific needs.
Where Do You Start?
First you should figure out what you actually want to do with your USB drive. I wanted to have a personalized portable desktop available to me, so I found the programs that suited me. Take a look at my software picks and tryout any that interest you.
How Big Of A USB Drive Do You Use?
I (currently) have four USB drives that I use:
- 512MB Sandisk Cruzer Micro
- 2 GB USB Flash drive from Micro Center
- HDD Walker with laptop hard drive (14GB)
- 320 GB Western Digital MyBook
To be fair, I have noticed that I only use the MyBook as a backup solution. As a matter of fact right now it mainly is filled with my temporary files that have been generated from my taking VHS home video and converting it to VCD or DVD.
After seeing that it is reasonably fast and stable, I can see getting several of these in the foreseeable future.
For the purpose of this page I will try to maintain only the items that that I have (or regularly use) on my 512MB Sandisk. This way if you have a larger drive than 512 you will know how that you can easily carry the suggested software.
A word about your antivirus software.
I have had (in the past) an issue with AVG Anti-virus giving me a “false positive” concerning my software from PortableApps.com. The AVG software then made all my software from PortableApps stop functioning by using a “quarantine” feature.
I learned that this is a common occurrence with some anti-virus programs and is usually fixed by the anti-virus companies fairly quickly.
Unfortunately, the way the anti-virus program stopped the programs from functioning was by removing the executables!!! This was a bit annoying to say the least.
If you are using AVG Anti-Virus you might want to consider following these instructions for turning off the “Automatically heal infected files” feature.
Here are the instructions as found on the PortableApps Forum:
1. Go to the AVG Test Center
2. On the top menus click on Tests –> Complete Test Settings
Then unclick “Automatically heal infected files” under “Scanning Parameters”
3. On the top menus click on Tests –> Selected Areas Test Settings
Then unclick “Automatically heal infected files” under “Scanning Parameters”
After you do those instructions then you can fix the affected programs like so: download the programs that were affected. Copy the somethingPortable.exe file from the re-extracted zip file and drop it back into the original folder that has all my data.
Ok, it looks more difficult when you read the instructions than when you actually do it.
Audio Software
My pick for a portable CD-Ripper and audio converter.
Simple Cd ripper program that comes with presets to ease the mp3 making process. Install the program to your computer, copy the file it creates to your USB disk, and uninstall the program from your computer if you wish.
A compact encoder that I use to transcode one file format into another (like wma into mp3). Has a nice wizard to guide you through the process.
Both of these are “drag and drop” music converters. Not as complete as CDex, but nice to have.
I rarely use them now (CDex does pretty much everything I need), but I keep them around since they are small and nearly foolproof for quick conversions.
Used to tag my music files. I also use it to rename my music files according to the id3 tag information. This is especially helpful when I have ripped something and the songs were named “Track 1″, “Track 2″, etc.
To make this file portable you will need to install it on a Windows machine and then copy the directory (C:\Program Files\Mp3tag\) to your USB drive. Then uninstall the program from the Windows machine.
My current favorite portable music player. I especially like the zip file playability (plugin), which I use to keep my ogg/mp3/wma files zipped and outside of a standard music file search. 
Encryption Software
I absolutely adore having my PGP software with me. I use it to sign my email and check email signatures I receive. Not to mention the occasional totally encrypted email to keep my personal correspondences…personal.
A good and simple encrypting tool. Just remember your password and you are set.
Without a doubt my most used encryption program(s). I had to wrangle it a little to make it portable, and I might show you how to do it yourself (in a later article).
If you want to take a look for yourself check out this thread. It’s what I used as a preliminary guide.
UPDATE 04-04-07: Timo has placed the WinPT project on “frozen” status due to time constraints. He emphasizes that the project is NOT dead, just currently inactive. A request for a developer to help with this project has been issued.
Per the Crypto Anywhere website:
If you run Crypto Anywhere from a floppy disk or USB drive, you can encrypt your email without even installing software on your workstation. With Crypto Anywhere you can send and receive secure mail to and from anyone with an email account – the recipients do not have to be “crypto savvy” or even have Crypto Anywhere themselves.
I personally use Mozilla Thunderbird with Enigmail+GPG for all my encrypted email. Mainly because I am comfortable with the software and feel that the community is large enough to find and fix security issues quickly. I have a link to it under my “Internet” section.
Graphics Software
My personal “go to” for my image editing needs. Since I don’t need something like Photoshop and like software that runs on all my platforms, GIMP is my program of choice.
An excellent program to view all your graphics files. I also use it to verify the proper size of CAL files (think of a printed image file…kind of like a fax).
Choose the ZIP version for your USB drive. Just unzip the file and run the xnview.exe.
Internet Software
Carry your FTP program with you. Excellent for uploading/downloading from an FTP server.
This program has been replaced with Mozilla Firefox and the FireFTP extension.
Not an “out of the box” portable app, but worth the effort. Just follow the instructions I found in this link.
The directions are pretty straight forward and the file works great from my USB drive.
This program has been replaced with Mozilla Firefox and the FireFTP extension.
A compact instant messaging client. I don’t message much, but thought this might come in handy.
Words cannot express how good this browser is, and with the abundant extensions that are available it becomes an amazing tool.
Be sure to check out my “must have” extensions to enhance Firefox.
Mozilla’s excellent standalone email program. Choose the version that includes Enigmail + GPG so you can send and verify encrypted or signed email.
Note: Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Offline & Disk Space, and check the box under the “Disk Space” heading to compact your folders. Otherwise you might wonder why your little USB drive is quickly running out of room.
Office Software
Read it, write it, organize it.
An excellent word processor. Offers many import and export options (OpenOffice, WordPerfect, etc.) as a seperate download, along with a great variety of tools (also a separate download). If you want a stable and fully capable word processor that has a small footprint, this is for you.
Download the three files (abiword-setup, abiword-plugins-impexp, abiword-plugins-tools) and install them on your Windows machine. Then copy the file (AbiSuite2) to your USB device. You can uninstall the program from Windows now if you wish.
With it’s small file size and ability to view, type on, and print PDF documents. It is a must have.
I used to use Notepad and Wordpad a lot, but with a tabbed interface, configurable syntax highlighting, and many other features, this program handles the files much better than either of those.
Without a doubt this is my favorite office suite. It handles more versions of M$ Office than M$ Office does, is available for virtually every system… at no charge, and it can create PDF documents natively. It also does spreadsheets (I love it for my time sheets!!!), and presentations. One of the programs that I couldn’t do without.
I am currently using the “Free” version of this program and it is doing everything I need. I like how small it is and how simple the interface is to use.
For use on a USB key look on the download page for “Portable versions of EssentialPIM “.
Utility Software
Here’s the software that helps you get the job done.
Integrated text editor (with dynamic highlighting), zip/unzip features, file search, quick launch area for fast access to the programs you use the most, and favorite buttons to quickly open those often used folders. It also has a dual-pane view for those of us that demand speed in file management.
It doesn’t seem that the original homepage for this is still around. I will continue to look for it and supply a local download of the program in the mean time.
Pure Gold. I use this program constantly. This utility allows me to rename several hundred files in seconds. I keep several copies around just in case something happens to their website!
I use it to convert Metric to English and square feet to acres, but it’s far more capable than that.
I am extremely pleased with the portable freeware version of this program. I use it to create data CDs and burn ISOs mainly, but it can do much more. Small, clean, and quick, this program is a staple now for me.
I use rsync a lot. Both at home and work. This program seems to streamline the process a great deal. It provides a graphical way to do almost exactly what I did with rsync. This program works great to synchronize “My Documents” with my USB drive and vice versa.
I use this to connect to remote desktops. It’s small, fast, and very reliable. Excellent for using several computers at once.
A great tool to recover deleted files from Windows. It even offers you the option to wipe a file so it can’t be easily recovered.
Although this software takes a little to get the hang of, it works well. I really like how many formats it supports, just wish the user interface was a little better.
Once ZipGenius comes out with a portable version I will most likely change to it. I am a huge fan of ZipGenius and firmly believe it will be a more user friendly product.
UPDATE 06-14-2007: ZipGenius apparently has a portable edition now. It’s just not listed on their homepage. I found it as part of the WinInizio PenSuite. Unfortunately, the smallest download that I could quickly find was about 46MB for the “utilities edition“. Hopefully, it will be listed someplace separately in the near future.
If you are looking for a really cool BitTorrent program that is very compact and easy to use, then this might just be what you are after.
If you want to catch up on what BitTorrent is then have a look here.
For large files a download manager is a must. This little freeware program works very well and is in my “toolbox” for just that reason.
I use wget in Linux quite often, so when I found a GUI version for Windows I had to try it. It is very efficient and works amazingly well. It is the program I use to get those large Linux ISO files while I am at… umm…work.
If I remember correctly, I downloaded the “install package” because it already had all the files I needed. Then I actually installed that to my desktop machine and then copied the folder over to my USB drive. It’s a couple of extra steps, but well worth it.
I recently found this program and am really starting to like it. I like the fact that it is free software and I will probably use it as my sole Zip program.
Video Software
I got tired of not having the proper video player or the right codecs installed on my computers so I thought it would be easier to go a portable route. This player can read most file types (DiVX, DVD, MPEG, etc) and it doesn’t take up the processing power of the mainstream players.
A highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
If you have ever been to Google Video or Youtube and thought “I wish I could save this” then VDownloader is what you are looking for. Using it you can download the videos in AVI or MPG format.
The page is in various languages, but there is an “English” section. And if you don’t like that there’s always a Google search.
Recently removed this in favor of another Mozilla FireFox extension. If you don’t use FireFox then take a look at this program.
