If you find yourself using multiple computers in multiple locations, now you can carry your favorite computer programs with you. We have previously written about a suite of applications for your USB flash drive called NirLauncher (Download free flash drive utilities – NirLauncher). There is another option that provides a different graphical environment.
The PortableApps.com suite is also a set of applications you can run from a USB flash drive and comes with a nice menu similar to the Windows Start menu. The suite includes bookmarks for web browsers, settings for various programs, your email, and more.
Run these programs on any Windows computer equipped with a USB connection. And you take your personal data with you when you leave with your USB flash drive. In additional to all that, all the programs available in the suite are free, with no ads, no limited or trial versions and you don’t have to give out your email address to download the suite or any of the programs.
Download the initial suite of programs from http://portableapps.com/suite. There are many more programs available to add to the suite, but the initial install has several useful programs already included. The Standard version of the suite (137MB download, 400MB installed) includes:
- Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition (web browser)
- Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition (email)
- Mozilla Sunbird, Portable Edition (calendar/tasks)
- ClamWin Portable (antivirus)
- Pidgin Portable (instant messaging)
- Sumatra PDF Portable (PDF reader)
- KeePass Password Safe Portable (password manager)
- Sudoku Portable (game)
- Mines-Perfect Portable (game)
- CoolPlayer+ Portable (audio player)
- OpenOffice.org Portable (complete office suite)
The Lite version of the suite (52MB download, 150MB install) substitutes AbiWord Portable, a word processor, for the OpenOffice.org Portable office suite.
The current version of the PortableApps.com suite as of the writing of this post is 1.6.1. Version 2.0 is due out soon with new software releases and new features being rolled out starting this week.
Install the PortableApps.com Suite
To install the PortableApps.com suite, double-click on the .exe file you downloaded. The initial installation screen displays. Click Next.
The License Agreement displays. Select the I accept the terms of the License Agreement check box and click Next.
Click the Browse button on the Choose Install Location screen to select the USB flash drive on which you want to install the PortableApps.com suite.
The Browse For Folder dialog box displays. Select your USB flash drive from the list and click OK.
NOTE: It’s best to install the PortableApps.com suite right to the root directory of your portable drive, E:\ in our example.
The drive letter for your USB flash drive is inserted into the Destination Folder edit box. Click Install to start the installation.
If you want to see what the installation is doing, click the Show Details button. Each step of the installation is displayed.
On the final screen, if you want to start the PortableApps.com suite when the installation is finished, select the Launch PortableApps.com Platform check box. If you want to use the PortableApps.com home page to be your default home page when browsing using Firefox Portable, select the Set portable homepage to Start.PortableApps.com. This provides you with a PortableApps.com branded Google search page. Click Finish to exit the installer.
Your USB flash drive now should contain an executable file to start the PortableApps.com menu (StartPortableApps.exe), an Autorun.inf file, and a Documents folder and a PortableApps folder. If you did not use an empty USB flash drive, you may have other files or folders on the drive.
Here is what the initial PortableApps.com menu looks like.
Install Additional PortableApps.com Applications
You can download other PortableApps.com free programs from http://portableapps.com/apps. The programs downloaded from this site have the .paf.exe extension.
To install a program you downloaded, open the PortableApps.com menu, click the Options button on the right, and select Install a New App from the pop-up menu.
In the Open dialog box, browse to the location of the .paf.exe file you downloaded and select the file. Click Open. We decided to add 7-Zip Portable to our menu so we have a compression utility. You can download 7-Zip Portable from http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/7-zip_portable.
A dialog box displays the progress of the installation.
When the installation is finished, click the Finish button.
When you open the PortableApps.com menu, you will notice that 7-Zip Portable has been added to the menu.
Add Other Portable Applications to the PortableApps.com Suite
You can also add portable programs that are not part of the PortableApps.com suite. For this example, we will add a program called Omziff which allows you to encrypt, shred, and split files, and generate passwords.
For more information about using Omziff, see the post on Online Tech Tips, Encrypt and Password Protect Text Files for Free. If you want to use Omziff to follow along with our example, you can download Omziff from http://www.brothersoft.com/omziff-62924.html.
Programs in the PortableApps.com suite reside in the PortableApps folder on the root of your USB flash drive. To add your own portable programs, just put the program files for the program in a folder within the PortableApps folder.
For this example, unzip the .zip file you downloaded for Omziff and copy the files to a folder of their own, called Omziff, for example, in the PortableApps folder on your PortableApps.com USB flash drive.
Open the PortableApps.com menu, click the Options button and select Refresh App Icons from the pop-up menu.
The programs on the menu are temporarily replaced with a progress bar, while the menu is being regenerated.
Now you will see Omziff has been added to the menu.
Wrap Up
This was the first post in a two-part series about the PortableApps.com suite which provides you with many useful portable programs you can take with you on your USB flash drive.
In this post we covered installing the PortableApps.com suite and installing PortableApps.com formatting programs and other portable programs to the suite.
Stay tuned for the next post where we will cover uninstalling programs from the PortableApps.com suite, scrolling through the menu, hiding and showing program icons on the menu, a convenient location for storing your data, backing up and restoring all or part of the PortableApps.com suite, and searching the PortableApps.com USB flash drive, computer, and web through the PortableApps.com menu.
by Lori Kaufman
[...] our posts, Install a Suite of Portable Apps on Your USB Flash Drive – Part I and Install a Suite of Portable Applications on Your USB Flash Drive – Part II, for more [...]
[...] you can run from a USB flash drive on any Windows computer equipped with a USB connection (Install a Suite of Portable Apps on Your USB Flash Drive – Part I and Install a Suite of Portable Applications on Your USB Flash Drive – Part [...]
Thank you for this guide. Good work.
Looked all over the net trying to find Just That One place that would tell me what I wanted to know. And here it was all the time. :-)
Thanx for your effort.