Never install software again! We look at more than 20 portable apps, from office suites to IP scanners. BY MICHAEL DESMOND here was a time, back in the days of DOS, .EXE into the Start menu, and run the portable app direct when installing a program meant copying from the hard drive. With portable apps, you can carry its files into a directory on a hard disk. 15 your programs and settings to almost any PC. years and many versions of Microsoft Win- For Haller, what began as a simple project has turned T dows later, the install process has become into a full-time job. Today, he maintains and distributes so complex and treacherous that it’s often blamed for portable versions of nearly a dozen open source applica- everything from program incompatibilities to system tions, which can be found at www.portableapps.com. From crashes. In fact, a cottage industry has emerged just to Firefox and the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client, to pop- clean up Windows Registries mucked up by things like ular open source programs like the OpenOffice suite and partial software uninstalls. FileZilla FTP client, his work is getting noticed. It doesn’t have to be that way. At least, that’s what John T. “I’ve got tons of e-mails from soldiers in Iraq and Haller believes. A Web developer in Queens, New York, Afghanistan, saying ‘Thank you for making this available Haller was able to tune the Firefox Web browser so it and making my life easier. It’s enabled me to keep in touch could run from a single folder on a USB storage key. with my kids and family. It’s enabled me to not take my It’s a big deal. So-called portable apps, like Haller’s mobi- laptop while I’m hiking up a mountain,’” says Haller, who lized Firefox, can run on any computer—even if the user also recalls having his site cited on such popular news sites lacks rights to install software. Plug in a USB key, double- as Slashdot and Digg on the day he released Portable click the firefox.exe file, and Firefox just runs. Or drop the OpenOffice. “It took out the site for about a day and a half. program folder onto the hard disk, move a shortcut to the That was a first for me.” ProductivityProductivity onon thethe GoGo Redmondmag.com Productivity on the Go So, should you be looking at portable The Tabs Have It user-customizable e-mail filters, apps as an alternative for your business? Mozilla Firefox and capable search and sort func- To help you decide, we looked at a bevy http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/browsers/portable_ tionality. While Thunderbird of install-free programs, ranging from firefox ably supports multiple POP3 productivity behemoths like the Disk space: 19MB accounts, the configuration inter- OpenOffice suite to nifty IT utilities The feature-identical version of the face is difficult and controls for like the Angry IP Scanner. The broad popular Firefox browser weighs in at managing passwords and upstream range of mature software surprised us, just under 20MB and offers familiar connections are unnecessarily features like tabbed complicated. browsing, support for Rating: 3.5 USB keys plug-ins and automat- ed program updates. PDF Portable Portable Firefox loads FoxIt PDF Reader a bit less quickly than www.foxitsoftware.com the installable version, Disk space: 2.6MB but the time difference Whether you work the line in IT is negligible. This is a or man a desk in marketing, you must-have app that can gotta read PDF files. FoxIt PDF help secure your surf- Reader ensures that you can read ing. Just be sure to any PDF, from any machine. manually turn on In our tests, it displayed large caching and other set- and complex PDF files with aplomb, tings if you intend to opening them in a fraction of the run this from your sys- time of the criminally bloated Figure 1. A host of portable apps can do everything from tem’s hard disk; these Acrobat 6 client. Scrolling and manage your schedule and e-mail to sleuth system settings and ping devices on the network. settings are turned off navigation are also slippery fast—a by default to streamline far cry from the delayed rendering as did the overall stability and perform- performance on flash-based USB keys. of Adobe’s client. ance of the portable code. Rating: 5 USB keys One annoying quirk: while FoxIt PDF Reader faithfully displayed text Productivity Apps All-in-One IM edit marks in our PDF files, it failed The Kitchen Sink Portable GAIM Beta 2 to pick up the associated text. The OpenOffice http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/chat/portable_gaim $35 Pro version includes edit tools. http://portableapps.com/apps/office/suites/portable_ Disk space: 15MB Rating: 5 USB keys openoffice This multi-protocol IM client replaces Disk space: 147MB dedicated IM software for MSN Mes- An Undercooked Calendar Almost ludicrously complete, this senger, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL IM, Mozilla Sunbird Microsoft Office competitor comes and a host of other protocols (including http://portableapps.com/apps/office/organization/ packed with word processor, spread- GroupWise, IRC and SameTime). portable_sunbird sheet, presentation, graphics design Quick and unobtrusive, GAIM includes Disk space: 7.44MB and database software. The massive nice features like Buddy Pounce for Mozilla’s answer to Outlook’s download may be too large for many catching elusive contacts the moment scheduling and task management USB keys, but the programs run reli- they log on. It also integrates better features is not nearly ready for ably and as quickly as the installable with Windows than Miranda, another prime time (as the 0.2 version version of OpenOffice. The applica- portable IM client alternative. number attests). tions read and write the latest Rating: 4 USB keys While there are daily, weekly and Microsoft Office formats and include monthly calendar views and support built-in PDF output—a nice plus. The POP Goes Your E-mail for recurring appointments and one concern: application load times. Mozilla Thunderbird alarms, Sunbird suffers from some Launching from the hard disk, http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/email/portable_ show-stopping issues. For instance, OpenOffice Writer took a full 15 thunderbird error messages can bedevil alarm seconds to come up on a 1.6GHz Disk space: 12MB notifications, especially when several Pentium M-based laptop. This capable POP3 e-mail client overdue events clamor for attention. Rating: 4.5 USB keys comes packed with junk mail controls, Rating: 2 USB keys Redmondmag.com Productivity on the Go PIM and Proper PIM replacement. But it sure is pretty. pound gorilla of image editing, but the EssentialPIM Portable Rating: 3.5 USB keys popular, open source application The www.essentialpim.com/?r=products&pr=dvsp GIMP has earned a spot in the primate Disk space: 1.7MB HTML Hotness display. A richly featured photo and Outlook schmoutlook. EssentialPIM Nvu image editor, The GIMP comes could be the killer app that keeps your http://portableapps.com/apps/development/web_ packed with powerful tools, controls Registry tidy and your schedule and editors/portable_nvu and filters for creating professional- contacts in order. The program offers Disk space: 10.3MB quality images. The portable version Creating HTML content was meant can take a long time to load, and the to be simple, straightforward and beta I worked with coughed up three clean, but along the way vendors like or four error messages during launch. Microsoft and Macromedia also made But the program lets you work with all it expensive. The solid, open source manner of files—including Photoshop Nvu HTML editor lets you create native .PSD files—and can be used for standards-compliant HTML pages everything from photo touchup and for nothing, and the portable version logo design to ground-up image cre- lets you do it from anywhere. The ation. Best of all, you can’t beat the interface can be a bit brittle—for price ($0 U.S.) with a stick. instance, HTML code and rendered Rating: 4 USB keys output reside under different tabs Figure 2. EssentialPIM supports recur- rather than side-by-side. But the Play Anything ring events and custom alarms, and lets graphical interface produces clean and Video LAN Client (VLC) you import calendar and task data from consistent HTML that roundtrips www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html Outlook and Outlook Express. reliably with Dreamweaver and other Disk space: 35MB ample calendar views and options, well-behaved HTML editors. Never open Windows Media Player including recurring appointments and Rating: 5 USB keys again. VLC is a self-contained media a useful text filter for hunting down player that supports an incredibly tasks, notes and contacts. Like other Freeware Photoshop broad range of codecs and formats. options here, the application can The GIMP Unlike the popular and portable Media import and export industry-standard http://portableapps.com/apps/photos_design/image_ Player Classic (MPC) app, VLC does- iCalendar files. Most impressively, it editors/portable_gimp n’t rely on system-installed codecs to will find and import your existing Disk space: 16.3MB interpret files. Instead, support for Outlook or Outlook Express data, Adobe Photoshop may be the 800- everything from .MPEG and .WMV to including contact, schedule and other information. Rating: 5 USB keys U3 Eases Portability Hassles The portable applications reviewed here will run from almost any media—portable hard disks, flash memory- iCalendar Eye Candy based USB keys, even CD/DVD optical discs and network drives. Alas, few mainstream vendors are likely to pub- Rainlendar lish portable applications because they can be so easily copied and pirated.