I have thought of a BRILLIANT idea! What if somebody made an add-on to the Portable Apps Platform that simulates a registry and all so you can install FULL programs that require a registry to PA!
What I'm thinking of would resemble Remote Desktop in principle, but instead of a whole other Windows computer, PA just has a registry (and maybe a way to make the Portable fonts fall under the same category as System fonts while it's running, and style themes as well) so you can run apps that would require a registry for things like purchased upgrades. It'd be a virtual system that contains the apps that are running WITHIN Portable Apps, and one could also install apps through it so when you set up, it skips the part where your computer records that app's filetypes.
It is a bit complicated, but that would make this thing SO much more powerful! What do you guys think?
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John has discussed the possibility of virtualization - he has said he would like to look at it in the future but it is a very minor priority (stopping PortableApps.com from costing him money is the main priority right now).
A few limitations though:
1) This wouldn't be implemented in the Platform. One of the versatile things about PortableApps is that you do not require the Platform to use the apps we provide, so this would be implemented in the Launcher to still allow standalone use of our apps.
2) You wouldn't be able to just install any app to it - this presents far too many legal implications with a lot of closed source apps, and PortableApps won't be dropping our 100% legal point of view any time soon. As such it would still only be implemented for officially released apps.