Hey John (and other developers if they're there - don't mean to slight you!), I love this work that you're doing - so much, in fact, that I'm trying to convert my wife to carrying the PortableApps suite with her to work and other places. I got the full PortableApps.com suite and put it on her memory stick.
I'm getting the "won't open on first launch" problem with Portable OpenOffice.org 2.0.1 - the splash dialog shows up and the progress bar moves to completion, but the app never opens. I saw that there is a patch for that which is supposed to be unzipped to a particular directory. Unfortunately, the way the suite is laid out, there are TWO directories that seem to fit the description, one in Apps and one in Data.