General Discussion

Anything wrong with using subst.exe to remap your usb drive letter (which may change) to a consistant drive letter (like u:)? This way the apps that need absolute paths in their config files will always find themselves at U:\PortableApps\.

I realize it might not be in the true spirt of Portable Apps, but it would solve a couple headaches of mine. (Tillian and skins for a couple media players come to mind)

So, any drawbacks? I realize you'll end up with two drive letters for the USB. Also, if the target computer already has a U:, the command will fail. I'm not saying this would work for everyone, but I think it will work for me. I use my USB and PortableApps to have a consistant experience between my two desks at work, my laptop and my computer. I just dont want to go down this path if there are some other issues with subst.exe that I'm not thinking of.

How can I use µTorrent on a USB key or other removable drive?
Simply copy settings.dat (located in %AppData%\uTorrent ) to the same folder as uTorrent.exe, and you're done.

http://www.utorrent.com/faq.php#How_can_I_use_.C2.B5Torrent_on_a_USB_key...

I started with that info and worked off it from there. The specific files you need to copy are located in "C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\uTorrent" These are the specific filenames: dht.dat, resume.dat, settings.dat. There may or maynot be .old versions of those files as well.

You can save the uTorrent.exe file from http://www.utorrent.com/download.php on your USB, then copy those files to the same directory.

Since it's supposed to be a good thing to not have programs which muck around with the registtry. Why wouldn't we just use all the portable apps on our primary computers also?

I just got a email newsletter from Linspire. They just released an Ajax word processor. Go to www.ajaxwrite.com and you have a fullfeatured word processor in a browser window. This is nothing new except for you can open edit and save Microsoft Word documents.

From the newsletter:

ajaxWrite is a powerful word processor that can read and write Microsoft Word formatted documents. Anytime you need a word processor, need to open a .doc file or edit a .doc file, simply point your Firefox browser at www.ajaxWrite.com and in seconds a full-featured program will be loaded. For 90 percent of the people in the world, the need to buy Microsoft Word just vanished. This won't make Microsoft happy, but software users should be very excited that software just got cheaper, immediate and modern.

Hello, I'm IIVQ and I'm just new to the portableApps forum.

At first, I wanted to say I love the programs on this site and the idea behind it. I just wonder ... was I the one who started it all?

Is there any way to play realmedia files on a pc that I can't install codecs on? Size isn't an issue. I searched through the forum and have the unfortunate feeling that there isn't...

Here is an app that I've used for years on my desktops, that lends itself quite well to portability on USB drives.

It's the actual NIST Internet Time Service or NIST as commonly referred to. It's a single self executing file (exe), and I'm using it right now on my USB drive to accurately set the time on a PCs internal clock via any internet connection.

It's a handy little tool for use as part of any general tune-up on a friend or customer's PC.

The app can be downloaded from NIST Internet Time Service, at:
http://tf.nist.gov/service/its.htm

Which of these portable apps work on a read only media like CD-R or CD-RW? FireFox and probably OpenOffice are out, but do apps like Gaim and FileZilla work from a burnt CD, maybe saving temp files to RAM and then when the app is closed the files are deleted from RAM?

Will there be an language Pack for the Portable versions averiable?

As I've hinted at in-forum and told several people offline, the site has gotten far more popular and in a much shorter timeframe than expected... causing several performance issues with the current host. That's why it's been offline a couple times in the last week. And, that's actually one of the reasons you haven't seen releases of Portable Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, ClamWin, GIMP, and why VLC and Miranda haven't been stuck on the main page. A single new release with a spike in traffic would kill the site/hosting account. That's also why setting up the more community-participation aspects of the site has been dragging.