Why Portable Freeware Applications?

If you have read the About MFR page you will already have an insight into why I think portable freeware programs should be an an important part of every users basic software suite of programs.

The main reasons are due to the fact that these programs do not require a lengthy installation process for each individual application when you are setting up a new computer or if an OS is replaced/upgraded or re-installed following a disaster. They do not write settings to the registry and any settings that are written are (should be!!) contained in files associated with the program folders. Sometimes this may be a user configurable option as may be the use of a separate settings file. Similarly data files that the program may produce for output or use to hold information, such as text files, word documents, tables, databases, etc. should not be kept in the Windows “Documents & Settings” User folders, or this should be a configurable option.

As you will see if you read my posts for portable freeware and portable applications, some already posted and more to follow over the coming months, or if you visit some of the other excellent web sites and blogs you will find referred to in these posts and the “Blogroll”, you can meet just about all of your program needs with such free software.

Are They Any Good?

As with any program some are better than others and some have more work done in keeping them up to date. Some of the best of these programs are very large projects, undertaken by many programmers working in teams. Open Office and the GIMP are good examples of such applications. Others are more modest projects undertaken by individual programmers who produce wonderful and very useful utilities that you may find are just what you need. There are many pros and cons to free software that have been written about at length elsewhere and I do not intends to repeat these details here. Suffice it to say that there will be occasional disappointments when programmers stop supporting their applications and they will not work on the latest operating systems or with the latest hardware and peripherals. However this is equally true with commercial programs and generally where support is continued you may well pay for the necessary upgrades.

Some Resources for More Information:

portableapps.com

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.

pendriveapps.com

Portable software applications that run from a USB device

This site is a resource for the review of portable Freeware and Open Source portable software applications that can be run directly from a USB device. By installing any of these portable applications to your USB flash pen drive, iPod or other portable device, you can bring your applications, tools, software, personal settings and files with you to use and run from on any available Windows client computer.

Bring your office applications, e-mail, web browser, instant messaging software, graphical editors, games, media player, antivirus software, recovery tools, encryption utilities, P2P filesharing utilities and much more with you to run from any Windows PC.
Many of these applications run completely from the portable device automatically saving your personal settings and changes back to the same device.

portablefreeware.com

About The Portable Freeware Collection

Background

I started this website in 2004 for a few reasons:

• I wanted to pick up some PHP.
• I wanted a quick way of searching through all the portable freeware that I have collected.
• I wanted to share my collection with like-minded people.

Since then, I have learnt that different people interpret the term “portable” differently. For example, some of the earlier emails I received were from people asking me why I was listing Windows-only software, since portable software should run on other operating systems as well! Needless to say, I have also learnt that different people interpret the term “freeware” differently as well.

Other Relevant Posts:

About My Free Review

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 7:03 am and is filed under Portable Freeware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.