I no longer use "public" computers. I always have my own computer with me now. Tell me again, why should I use Portable Apps?
When I started using PAs, a few years ago, I sometimes used computers at the library or internet cafes, etc. Now I have a notebook computer, and a netbook that I take anywhere I go. I cannot imagine using a "public" computer again, except in an extreme emergency.
Are there any real advantages to installing PAs on my own computers, rather than the standard versions of the same programs that write to the Windows Registry?
I have PAs installed on USB sticks, but don't have any occasion to use them anymore. Are there some advantage that I may be overlooking?
I do think that the Windows Registry scheme was a solution to a problem that no longer exists.
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yep, you're overlooking a couple of advantages.
#1: If your system crashes or you need to reinstall it for some reason, you'll still have all your apps and settings.
#2: If you decide to show a friend something, you'll still have all your apps and settings instead of needing to re-download, re-install, and re-configure the app on his computer.
#3: If you need to use a public computer anymore (e.g. on a business trip), you'll still have all your apps and settings.
#4: If one of your friends needs computer help, you don't need to download a bazillion apps to their computer - especially useful if their Internet connection is the problem.
And yes, I completely agree that the Registry is useless. I don't know if it was the solution to a problem though - for many people, the Registry is the problem, and it's probably been that way since day #1.
Cheers!
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
I use portable apps on my home computers for one of the very reasons stated above. I've had to reinstall various versions of Windows more times than I care to remember, and it's bad enough that you have to wait an hour or two for Windows to install. I really don't feel like sticking another hour or two on top of that while I try to reinstall all the applications I use.
With portable apps, I install Windows, then simply copy my backup of my portable apps back onto the appropriate drive and it's job done. All my favorite apps are ready to go.
Plus, there are times where I go to friend's/family's houses and I don't like to mess with their computers, so I know that if I take my flash drive I'll have pretty much every app that I could possibly want.
Well, the advantages have all been described.
The one major disadvantage is that portable apps don't associate with files. There are a few hacks and programs out there to accomplish this, the most recent being eXpresso -- search for it here, it'll come up. (This is the same as CAFE Mod, and Coffee -- it's all the same app under different names, but eXpresso is the latest.) But even if you do that, I'm pretty sure Firefox doesn't become the default handler for URLs. So for that maybe you might want to install Chrome just to catch those stray URL calls and use Portable Firefox for 'deliberate' browsing.
You will get tired of the splash screens, if you're not already. Simple fix. Go to the app's directory. Go to Other, then Source. Right-click AppNamePortable.ini (where AppName is the name of the app) and choose copy. Go back to the app's main dir. Right click, paste. Edit the file. Change the false to true for DisableSplashScreen. Exit and save.
Furthermore, you might want desktop shortcuts, but the Platform won't do that for you (it's not meant to). Go into each app folder and make a shortcut to AppNamePortable.exe for each app you want on your desktop. Put them all off to one side for now. When all your shortcuts are made, go to the root of your drive or some folder you like, and name it Shortcuts or something. Note the drive letter, and make a folder with that name. Now copy all the desktop shortcuts to portable apps to this folder. When you reinstall, if the drive letter is the same, copy the shortcuts back to the desktop. If the drive letter is different, either copy the shortcuts and manually edit them all, or make the shortcuts anew, but this time make a folder with the new drive letter, back them all up there.
Another thing you can do with your shortcuts file, place one of each kind of file you want to register with portable apps in a folder. One Mp3, one MPEG, one AVI, one JPEG, one GIF, one BMP -- they can be one second or 1x1 images -- and right-click them (following a Windows reinstall), and set up the association right then and there. (Associate them with AppNamePortable.exe, not the actual app. It'll work.)
PortableApps run just as fast as their installed brethren, and they don't mess up your Registry, so in theory, your Windows installation should remain pure longer (at least due to Registry corruption being avoided).
I do it... works for me.
A looong while ago, Ryan made DefaultMyFFP.
Also, there were once a bunch of apps that could create shortcuts (I think one of my old launchers did that...don't remember which...wait, I think it was that thingy, um...UPAADA?).
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You don't even know your own programs?
It was DeskLinkz, remember?
I'm getting old.
But yeah, that thing.
(Where is it, anyway?)
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The Windows Registry and having software install and marry the operating system was Microsoft's way preventing portability. Microsoft wants you to use their software and third-party software that came with your computer. They want uninstallation to be a troublesome, error-prone process. They have even argued in court that uninstalling Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player was impossible. They want to preserve software monopolies and first-mover advantages.
Now, on to what makes portable applications better than installed applications. In addition to what others have mentioned, portable applications are far easier to try without fear of loading your system with cruft. They also let you cleanly have more than one version of an application at the same time.
I would like to point out that you wrote "Are there any real advantages to installing PAs on my own computers..." Notice that you don't need to go through with installing PAs. Extract them and delete them as you wish.
The Windows Registry was developed to speed up apps by eliminating their having to read ini files scattered around the hd. SYSTEM.ini, WINDOWS.ini, and app .inis. Disk IO is slow. The Registry is resident in RAM, access is instantaneous.
Ed
Installed and portable, the same app, on the same drive have performance parity, and if they don't, the human mind can't perceive it. Slow apps like VLC and OpenOffice are no slower portable and faster apps like Notepad++ and KeePass are no faster installed. Even on a single-core CPU.
Maybe your solution was good ten, fifteen years ago, but if that's true, it's no longer relevant today.
Now portable apps on slower drives (e.g. SanDisk) are going to be slower than apps installed to the hard drive, but that's not portability's fault or the fault of using a .ini as opposed to the Registry, it's just a matter of a slow flash drive.
Yes, the Registry came about years ago, when slower hds and slower processors prevailed, Windows 98 I think, and MS hasn't changed the concept much since then. The advantage today is it provides a centralized repository for items shared between apps.
Ed
I'm still amazed that there is a computer in my house with 320 GB in my house. I don't know how I'd possible fill all that space.
In my opinion, shared objects are fairly useless now. When I run CCleaner the #1 most frequent problem is missing local shared objects. We have enough disk space for redundancy.
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Ha! Do you remember all the fuss over the 1GB hard drive? I thought an 800MB drive would be nice to have, but 1GB was special. Kind of like the 750GB and 1TB drives a year, year and a half ago.
I'm so old-school I was planning to stick an 80GB hard drive in my new computer that I'll be building over the next couple months. Not just an 80GB, of course... I mean just for the C drive. So I look up 80GB drives on Newegg... $34.99. Not bad. I paid $40-$45 for the one in my current computer. C shouldn't be any bigger anyway, not if you reformat. That's a lot of data to have to back up.
But I did some research... a 500GB drive will only cost me $49.99 on the Egg. And why the bleedin' heck not? I'll partition off 80GB for C and the remainder will be another drive. It's a Samsung though, I was really hoping to stick with Western Digital... I'll have to look and see what their equivalent drive costs, can't be much more... (Also opted for the quad, AMD Phenom II 940BE 3.2GHz per core... MSI 9800GT 1GB GDDR5 SLI-ready GPU... this thing's gonna smoke and only cost me $772 to build, and that includes Win7HP but nothing else outside the tower. Just waiting on the Mrs. to decide if we buy the parts with the tax return or my bonus check...)
Portable versions and installed versions of several of the apps, and I've not noticed any appreciable performance difference.
Besides, many of the apps launchers DO create registry entries, which are removed or reversed upon exit.
For most of the apps, I'm pretty sure the only ini files added are used during startup. And yes, startup of portable apps is slower than installed ones, but not enough to outweigh the benefits. My backups of PortableApps have helped me easily recover from at least 4 different hard drive failures over the years.
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