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General Discussion

General discussions of portable apps and news.

"True" portability vs Windows Prefetch?

Submitted by cde on May 22, 2006 - 3:57am

I'm on a Mac at the moment, so I can't test this myself, but it just occurred to me...

As far as I know, every .exe launched in WinXP (and later) will result in a corresponding entry in the WINDOWS\Prefetch folder. This file will certainly indicate the date & time the .exe was active, and presumably has some encoded information regarding the .exe itself - its location on disk, and which disk, is probably stored but may not be readily legible to the human eye.

My point is this: Many people here go to great lengths to point out that some apps (notably TrueCrypt) are not "Truly portable", because they leave some traces. Also people seem keen to have security-related apps, sometimes including unerase tools, secure deletion tools and apps to clean up traces of their activity on the host PC.

Generic Vs. Name Brand Thumb Drives

Submitted by eeefresh on May 19, 2006 - 9:17pm

I've had a Lexar 128 MB Jump Drive Sport for about two years now, but I never got much use out of it until I found this site. Now I'm finding that 128 MB just ins't enough for my apps and all my files.

While browsing eBay, I noticed that there are several "no name" brands of thumb drives being sold for next to nothing. Has anyone ever used a no-name brand? Are they all the same, or is it worth paying more for a brand name?

Beginner Portable App FAQ?

Submitted by franklen on May 17, 2006 - 12:10pm

Hi, I'm getting my first USB drive and will be running firefox and thunderbird from it while traveling this summer. I am still trying to get my head around using apps from a USB drive though. Is it possible to run any program from a jump drive? Or only apps that are specially programmed? In any case, is there a good FAQ anywhere that I might have missed?

What I am really curious about is a program I use called Wikipad. I know there are wikis like tiddlywiki I could use instead that would probably work on the portable firefox app. Is there a reason I couldn't use this Wikipad program off of a USB drive? Thanks, just a little confused.

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