Not a request, I swear!
Anybody seen this? The Staples ad this weekend has it. $25 if you buy a computer, $50 otherwise, comes on a flash drive that says exactly that on it (topic title). Looks generic, but nicer than your average SanDisk Cruzer.
I was just flipping through that, and the Best Buy ad looking at flash drives and portable hard drives wondering when I was going to see a flash drive preloaded with PortableApps stuff, which I know is a ways off, when I saw this.
Makes me wonder how they - commercial software in general - work with portability. Maybe you've gotta register and activate it from your own computer, and then any time you use it, it's gotta get online and verify it's legal. But if you need a USB rescue drive, you've got problems, maybe you don't want to get online, so as to avoid your problems downloading other problems or worming their way to other computers. In which case ClamWin Portable would be better. Now, if you don't need to go online to register and activate at all, they're putting a lot of trust in their users to not copy the flash drive for all their friends. Even if you have to register and activate, but it doesn't need to authenticate online, the registration/activation key can and would be copied along with it.
With netbooks getting so big, so fast, it seems like a PortableApps-branded flash drive should be hitting the market in time for back-to-school. If not this year (it's kinda too late), next year. Here in North Carolina, we have one weekend a year where sales tax is waived for certain things, and I believe flash drives do qualify. Computers and all kinds of computer accessories do. It was just this past weekend. I don't know what a PortableApps.com-branded flash drive will cost; if it's very close to the fair cost of a regular flash drive, the tax will only be a couple bucks, but every bit helps (especially with the way the economy is).
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well it will not be perfect, but will work kind of. If you have played sometimes with some of the payware from U3 , you might see how abt this is done. Lets take something similar, e.g avast antivirus for U3. OK it is first here and will run. Fine, But any such SW needs updates for the database. So here avast will allow you to update for some time like a months or so and then all stopps unless you pay ...
How is it done? On the U3 you know you have faked CD and there is controller being capable of handling this and that. After you register (and pay) you have a key fine, but this is in such case created with the aid of the stick and the software on it and is then placed in propper format in the system area of the stick. It will not work when transfered to other stick or place, sticks have also unique number , I assume at least this is used here too.
How norton or avast is doing their job exactly I dont know, but you see it can be done in number of ways, more protected or not so much protected, many options are open.
I case of avast, all runs initially fine, then at some point one can not update any more and even trying to update manually from the normal update files, some part is still missing, the software will complain it can not find this and that and is apparently looking for it somewhere on the 'system' .
And what should I do with antivirus without update?
And the only way you can update this one is to let the software to connect to net and update itself, while doing that their server can ask lot of things.
And you know, while one can create faked CD and an other partition on a stick very easy, it will still not have the proper functionality when the stick is not one of the sandisk variety.
And finally there even quite sofisticated gadgets around, with kind of half hardware firewall in it, just sitting inside some usb stick device:
http://www.yoggie.com/Firestick-Pico
It has number of disadvantages, it needs to hook to the system with extra drivers, but it is some attempt to make something better then the ususal personal firewall bloatware. And the content of those devices is also not simple a software one can copy-paste to other stick and see it running.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
How are they related to portable applications on a USB flash drive?
First off, more software is being distributed via download and via flash drive because Netbooks have no optical drive.
Second, many Netbooks have very small SSD drives so users augment them with a PortableApps.com-enabled flash drive.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
If I see somebody with a netbook, I'll recommend Portable Apps to save drive space.