I know you can run portable from a flash drive without isntalling anything, but I'm wondering if running a portapp on a computer installs anything into the computer registry or store any settings on a folder on the computer. basically, is there any footprint or anything left behind after the flash drive is removed.
also, do portapps suffer from anything that the full version doesnt? are they slower? or missing features?
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PortableApps.com applications leave no PERSONAL data or any settings behind, but due to the nature of Windows itself there will always be some trace that an app was run. Just stuff in Most Recently Used and Cache and stuff like that will be left.
The developer formerly known as ZGitRDun8705
First to answer your second question, the apps here don't suffer from any such lack of features. I can't speak for all of them, but there are a couple things Firefox and VLC can't or shouldn't do portably that you could do at home. A bug in Firefox will reportedly cause problems if you automatically update. Go in and disable this. It updates fine for me, but that's what I read up here. Also for VLC you don't want to stream from your USB drive. And if your USB drive is slow, your apps will suffer from that, but not because it's portable, but because the drive sucks.
VLC leaves a record of DVDs you've watched in Documents and Settings\Your Name\Application Data\dvdcss in the form of folders with the volume label of the disc(s).
Firefox occasionally leaves behind a Mozilla folder in Documents and Settings\Your Name\Application Data.
The registry folder HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\ShellNoRoam\MUICache lists all the apps your computer has used, including apps on your portable device. You can safely remove these references if you like.
That's what I know.
thanks for the info, it makes sense you cant update the apps, and so does the usb flash drive speed dependency.
so all in all these portapps are pretty solid? im considering just making a folder with a few of them, as to not clutter my registry with full versions.
Yeah, they're good. Anything you can get portable, it's more efficient to run it portably, at the cost of not being able to use your registry. Now don't let these guys fool you here at PA.com, the registry does have its purpose, Microsoft didn't make it to fool anybody. Among other things your registry associates file extensions to your apps, but if you're fine dropping your documents (including music and video) onto the apps directly, you don't need that feature. Why we/they advocate avoiding the registry is simply that if you want to carry your settings from machine to machine, it's best to store settings locally. And it's courteous to the owner of the other machine if it's not yours.
Even for personal use, consider the benefits. One, Windows is buggy. Might even say it's buggered. Some do. So you install Windows, you get all the security fixes, you install your apps, to do right takes several hours. Or... you have your portable apps on this nice menu on another drive, you install Windows, and while you're getting your updates, your apps are just fine, good as ever. Two, you go on a trip, you go to see the folks, whatever, you carry that hard drive with you. Got all your documents, videos, music, whatever. Western Digital just dropped the 2TB (that's 2,000GB) drive, so the 1TB and 1.5TB externals should be coming down in price. PA.com plus terabyte drive plus all your music and videos equals a whole lotta win, especially if you can carry it around. Two, while you can put any old freeware or even commercial software on your drive with varying degrees of legality (a topic for another day and outside the purview of this example), PA.com only supports FOSS (Free Open Source Software). Most of these apps are in Linux, too. Get used to using Firefox, Pidgin, Thunderbird, VLC, and OpenOffice, among others, it makes going to Linux someday a more viable option. Windows 7 is pretty, but it's gonna cost you. Kubuntu, or Ubuntu with KDE rather than Gnome (since Gnome resembles MacOS and KDE is more the Windows-lookalike, sort of), looks almost as good (some say better) and it's free.
Long story short it's just good feelings all around.
And you can update the apps actually. You just install the new version over the old version. Just like that. No mess. You can mess up your registry doing that (not something Microsoft is proud of) but the apps here at PA.com keep the app and data folders completely separate, and updating the app doesn't hurt your data folder (your settings) in the least. Very good and efficient how that works. And it's only Firefox AFAIK that has an automatic update option that we aren't supposed to use. Only one I've seen. Used to be able to update just fine - and I can here - but some users reported problems, so it's just "not recommended". Otherwise it works (worked) like a charm.
hell yeah, that's basically what my mentality was and you just backed it up
I love the idea or portable apps, it's just so much easier and cleaner, keep all your apps in one place, install time takes what, 15 seconds? even for those illegal photoshop and office portables, which im sure exist somewhere.
now, you said they run FASTER. are you sure? it just doesn't make sense that they would run faster (assuming they are on your hdd not a memory stick. i just figured the registry also sped things up in applications, but i could be very wrong, and would probably fall in love even more with portapps if it were true.
hell, why install any apps the old windows way?