A little idea I had just now: What about adding an email checking functionality to the Menu?
Nothing fance, just checking one or more POP3/IMAP accounts in the background every x minutes and giving some optical feedback if new mail arrives (animated trayicon, litte popup).
That would eleminate the need to have my own email program or a separate checker running all the time.
A click on a popup (if you don't go for the animated icon) could either start a portable email program or open a webmailer page in a browser (ideally a portable one, ideally a different one depending on the account checked).
I know that loading the menu with to much functionality is not a good idea, but I always want to know if new mail arrives... just think about it.
Thunderbird Portable with the Minimize to Tray extension.
----
Ryan McCue
Person 1: Oh my god. You will never believe what just happened.
Person 2: What?
Person 1: I can't remember, I've forgotten.
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
That would eleminate the need to have my own email program or a separate checker running all the time.
I don't know about you, but I sometimes work on an old 500 MHz AMD K6-2 with just 256 MB RAM.
That's the kind of machine I don't want to slow down by starting a memory hog like TB, if I only want to be notified when I got new mail.
TB and FF are great programs, but they eat up a lot of memory, and it's a waste of resources to have them running all the time when a small tool suffices.
Now, I *could* start such a email notify program from my PortApps Menu, but since the menu is running anyway and checking for new mails is such a little task it would be more efficient to combine those two.
When selecting programs for my thumbdrive I put emphasis on size and resources needed, as I never know what kind of computer I might end up having to use them on.
Not to long ago my mother's PC had only 128 MB RAM...
It's ePrompter. I've used it a few years back, so I don't know if it's portable now or not. It is free to use (not open source).
UPDATE: I've installed it. It does not write to registry, but it does write an ini file in %windir%. Also, I don't think it supports IMAP, only pop3 an webmail.
---------------
Teen1: Oh, here comes that cannonball guy. He's cool.
Teen2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?
Teen1: I don't even know anymore.
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." -- Robert Frost
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: baby ain't mine." -- Adam Holguin
I do have an portable email notifier (PopTray), and know about others (Vallen has one, afaik). That's not the point.
The point is, that is doesn't make much sense, imnsho, to have a separate program running for that small task, when the menu is running anyways.