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Office 2003

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vjuhasz
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Office 2003

Hello,

I am wondering if a legal copy of Office 2003 can be packaged in PortableApps format? Is this technically possible?

I am not talking about MS licensing issues, but would be interested if the PortableApp format is advanced enough to handle such an app (wits its tons of registry entries) correctly.

Any feedback is appreciated.

NathanJ79
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Possible

It should technically be possible. I don't see why not. As long as it doesn't require .NET and isn't tied to a hardware profile. Maybe some of the interoperability between Office 2k3 applications would be affected, but I don't see how e.g. Word and Excel couldn't be made portable.

Open source can be tweaked and recompiled. Firefox is altered this way. Notice the absence of the Profile Manager? (If you have Firefox installed, run it with the command-line argument --profilemanager (maybe just one dash?) to see it.)

Freeware is usually done with the cooperation of the publisher, so they can tie up loose ends if need be.

Microsoft would likely want nothing to do with PA.c (as I understand it, they're working on their own U3 clone) and wouldn't give an inch.

Even if you have a legal copy, it isn't legal, as far as I know. It would be an unauthorized modification forbidden in the EULA.

Chris Morgan
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Firefox is not altered at

Firefox is not altered at all. It's just that the profile manager is incompatible with specifying the location of the profile to use as Firefox Portable does.

Office would be difficult to do but technically possible. Anything is technically possible, even .NET stuff or hardware profile things or anything like that. It's just not practical as you may need to hook into just about everything that exists.

The Microsoft/Sandisk project to supersede U3 seems to have died. They haven't said anything about it for a few years.

As far as I know, Office's EULA disallows those sorts of modifications altogether, not just redistribution. I can't be bothered finding it and checking though.

I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1

NathanJ79
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...

Chris MorganFirefox is not altered at all. It's just that the profile manager is incompatible with specifying the location of the profile to use as Firefox Portable does.

Not that I doubt you, but it sounds like a contradiction. I've tried to call the profile manager before (not knowing that it wasn't there) and it didn't come up at all. I would think that if it were not altered at all (aside from the launcher etc.) that it would come up. (Or maybe I passed the argument to the launcher and not firefox.exe?)

Chris MorganThe Microsoft/Sandisk project to supersede U3 seems to have died. They haven't said anything about it for a few years.

I wouldn't count out a Microsoft project with flash drives. Ars Technica had an article about a Microsoft tool that could copy a Windows CD to a flash drive for faster installation. Microsoft's been talking about putting Office in the cloud and charging a subscription fee, rather than licensing the software all up front. Maybe Windows 8 will come on a flash drive, with a trial of Office 2010 that can be unlocked to full, with Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player set to sync up with their installed brethren when the drive is inserted, and done in such a way that you can't alter the software on it, it'd be in some kind of read-only partition. I think they'd need at most 8GB for Windows 8 and Office. The rest would be insignificant. Then 8GB for user data (e.g. multimedia) for the base model or 24GB for a better model (16GB flash drive vs. 32GB flash drive). This would be awesome for frequent installers/reinstallers, which includes corporate/education users, and it'd be good for netbooks that don't have optical drives. Say you have a netbook with Linux and you want Windows. This would be your key. Et cetera...

(And I know that's all speculation, but I think it's very much possible.)

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