Portable software for USB drives

I’ve mentioned previously running software from a USB stick – and what I might put on it to make a “learning kit”. When I first tried, it was a case of downloading several Portable Apps & just putting them on a USB stick. Now the site that offers the Portable apps has also added a front end so you can have a start menu rather like Windows Start Menu. As well as the start menu, which is “nice”, it also includes backup features (you can choose where to back up to) – which is defintely “useful”.
There are quite a few apps, I’ve got most of them, and have added Moinmoin desktop, which was automatically added to the menu. I’ve now installed some of the extensions such as Zotero for students. The main drawback that I’ve found is that it’s not possible to install Java to the stick, so if you are using websites that require Java, you have to be using a PC that has Java installed.
On my massive new 2GB USB stick (we now have a branch of Novatech in the Uni), I have still got about 1.6 GB free for data etc.

3 thoughts on “Portable software for USB drives”

  1. Thanks for the information about the upgrade. I have used portable apps with my students but have not yet tried this package.

    best wishes

    Rowland

  2. For the Portable Software fiends amongst you, wikipedia has a list of portable applications that you can mess around with. Lots of goodies, altohugh I haven’t tried most of them.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_portable_applications

    Another handy tip for anybody in UoP. If you are tired of (some of the) cranky old software available over the University’s Novell network, install the Portable Apps suite that Emma mentions in her main post to your N: drive, et voila. Right proper Firefox (and indeed a lot of other software you know and love), with proper extensions and themes and goodies all from your N: drive. No admin/install rights necessary.

  3. I’ve just checked on a University PC with limited access – and have been able to install Portable Apps onto my N:/drive. It will make things much easier for those students who like Firefox 2 etc.,

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