Computer Realm

Today, most applications are very ‘portable’ friendly unlike in the past where applications were as machine dependent as an OS. Well, here I’ve compiled a list of six applications you should have on your portable device. All these applications are non-machine dependant and do not require installation.

1. Mozilla Firefox

It’s always nice to have your favorite browser with you wherever you go with the bookmarks, history, settings, plugins (and the list goes on) you prefer. With the light system resources it consumes depending little on the registry even when installed I doubt it’s that hard to create a completely portable non-machine dependant version of it. That’s what PortableApps and Mark J Crane has done. Both applications does the job and function differently but both versions of it are completely standalone, not machine dependant and does not synchronize with the host’s installed Firefox in any way.

Mark’s Firefox is named Mobile Firefox and John’s (from Portable Apps) Firefox is named Firefox Portable. After some rigorous testing with both Apps the Firefox from PortableApps turned out to be better and I really recommend using that one (no offence to Mark), mainly because of bugs in Mobile Firefox, a few of the bugs being the inability of automatic updating and restoring tabs from previous sessions.

Also, the portable version could be useful if you are on your home computer as well, specially if you don’t have your own Notebook and share a family PC as it acts as a separate browser allowing more personalization just the way you want it.

1. Opera

Well, don’t get disheartened too fast Opera fans! There’s a portable version for Opera as well and it’s just as good in terms of portability. I’ve used this as well and found no problems. You can get it from here. It has the U3 version as well as just the portable version for regular non U3 drives. I also found a new portable Opera apparently at kejut.com. I haven’t tested it but based on the comments on the site it looks like it’s good to go.

1. Foxit Reader

Well, Adobe may be having a Google PR of 10 but believe it or not I’ve seen quite a few PC’s occasionally without a PDF reader installed, so you might want to just have the portable version of Foxit on your storage device. I’ve used the portable version of Foxit which you can download at Sourceforge and it works fine.

1. The File Splitter

Have two one GB USB sticks and need a file which is 1GB plus? Not to worry! With The File Splitter you can easily split files and join them back just like that! This 70 KB completely portable application splits a file and in the process creates a separate EXE to join the files back again.

1. VLC Media Player

VLC is one of the best media players out there which plays virtually any file. Having it on your portable device can come in real handy, you wouldn’t have to worry about downloading codecs wherever you go with this under your belt. VLC portable again can be downloaded from PortableApps.

1. WinRAR Unplugged

(I could safely say) WinRAR is the best compression utility out there, its RAR format compresses way more than the ZIP format does and compression is relatively faster. Unfortunately some people prefer to stick with Winzip and other compression utilities which are just not there yet when it comes to file compression as WinRAR is. With WinRAR Unplugged you can use WinRAR with the same functionality as you would have as when it is installed on your computer.

Well, those are six applications you should be having on your portable device. There are tons more you could get but these six are quite essential and its recommended you use them if you have a portable storage device.

Here are some other resources where you could get tons more portable applications:

• PortableApps
• SnapFiles
• U3 Download Central (only if you have a U3 device)
• Portable Freeware
• Pendrive Apps

Portable applications is pretty much a broad topic so I should be talking more about them in the future so just hang on there!

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