COMPUTER WORLD

This stuff can be installed on any portable drive, i.e. USB thumbdrive, PDA or an iPod. You can use them at work, school, or any other place where you can plugin your device. Check them out, you can either scroll-down for relevant category, i.e office software, email tools, messengers, games, etc. or get a ‘all-in-one’ package (all essential tools) . While there are more apps for windows users, I tried to include a mac version for each essential tool. All free. Enjoy!




What is a portable program ? : A portable program is a piece of software that you can carry around with you on a portable device and use on any other computer. It can be your email program, your browser, system recovery tools or even an operating system. The coolest part about it, is that all of your data and settings are always stored on a thumbdrive so when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind.



Portable Office Software



Abiword [Win (6.3 mb) / Mac (9.5 mb)] – word processor (compatible with Microsoft word)

OpenOffice [Win (65 mb) / Mac (127 mb)] – free alternative to Microsoft Office (fully compatible with Microsoft Office docs)

PDF Viewers: Sumatra [Win (1.1 mb) ], Foxit PDF Reader [Win, (1.8 mb) ]

Notepad ++ – feature-rich Notepad replacement.

Portable Email/Calendar/ToDo Programs



Mozilla ThunderBird – [Win (6 mb), Mac (20.5 mb), Cross-Platform (Win, Mac)] – very good email client (built-in address book, import/export, tons of addons)

Calendars: Mozilla Sunbird [Win, 5.6mb], Sunbird [Mac, 9.7mb], Lightning [Win, 1.3mb) - ThunderBird addon

Mail [Mac] – requires locally installed Mail.app

iCal [Mac] – requires locally installed iCal.app

Address Book [Mac] – requires locally installed Address Book

Quick Mailer [Win, 20kb] – tiny program for sending quick e-mail messages

gDisk [Mac, 1020kb] – handy program that turns your gmail account into a portable hard drive. (More stuff for gmail)

Portable Text and Voice Messengers



All-in-One (Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, etc.): Gaim [Win, 6.9 mb], Miranda IM [Win, 1.2 mb], Adium [Mac, 15.5mb], Trillian [Win]

iChat [Mac] – requires locally installed iChat

Newspeak [Mac, 1mb] – Newspeak Cocoa IRC client

Skype – exlpains how to make skype portable

Portable Media Tools (Audio / Video)



Audacity [Win (2.4 mb), Mac (5mb)] – simple audio editor and recorder

VLC [Win (9.3 mb), Mac (24 mb)] – powerful media player that plays almost all popular audio and video formats

iShout [Mac, 7mb] – record and listen to your favorite internet radios.

CocoaJT [Mac, 8.7mb] – stream live TV programs from major broadcast channels.

Portable Graphics Viewers and Image Editors



GIMP [Win (8.6 mb), Mac (87.5 mb)] – free alternative to Photoshop

IrfanView [Win, 1013kb] – fast graphic viewer with basic image editing features

XNView [Win, Mac, Linux] – image viewer and converter (supports more then 400 image formats)

Inkscape [Mac, 24.6mb] – scalable vector graphics editor

Portable Browsers and Internet Tools (FTP, Feedreaders, Torrent Clients…)



Firefox [Win (5.8 mb), Mac (21.9mb), Cross-platform (Win, Mac) ]

Other browsers: Camino [Mac, 16.2mb], Opera [Win], Safari [Mac] – requires installed safari

Feedreaders (RSS, Atom …): RSSOwl [Mac, 5mb], Feed [Mac, 564kb], GreatNews [Win], Sage [Win, 0.2 mb]

FTP Clients: Filezilla [Win, 2.3 mb], FireFTP [Win, 0.1mb], CyberDuck [Mac, 9.9mb]

TrayURL [Win] – bookmark manager

uTorrent [Win] – popular torrent downloader

Portable Security Software



Antivirus: ClamWin [Win, 5.9mb], Dr.Web CureIt [Win, 5.5 mb]

Keepass Password [Win, 1mb] – securely store and manage your passwords

Omziff [Win, 0.5mb] – lets you encrypt/decrypt a file, using secure encryption algorithms. Also includes a password generator, file shredder, file splitter and some more tools.

LockNote [Win] – simple text file that lets you store sensitive info with 256bit password encryption.

RoboFor2Go [Win] – secure password manager and form filler

Smart Sniff [Win, 57kb] – lets you inspect network traffic that passes via your network adapter.

Portable Games



Sudoku – popular puzzle game

Bricks2000 – popular tetris clone

Logix – something similar to minesweeper

GeneRally – 2D racing game

Nagaskaki – chess game

NarkoMania – cool minesweeper clone

NeverBall – part puzzle, part action game

Other Portable Utilities



7Zip [Win, 1.1 mb] – file archiver and compressor, supports 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, RAR and more

Registry Tweaker [Win, 1.52mb] – registry tweaking tool

Restoration [Win, 229kb] – handy program for recovering deleted (or formatted) files

YamiPod [Win] – powerful iPod manager (copy mp3/AAC files to and from your iPod, import/export playlists, search for songs, remove duplicates,..). More iPod tools

Drive Manager [Win, 1191 kb] – quick summary for each local and removable drive.

PStart – lets you organize and create menu-like list for quicker access to your portable programs.

SyncPAppX – script that syncs preferences between portable and local applications.

RQ Money – handy utlity to manage your credits and debts

SIW – a system analysis tool that tells you almost everything you need to know about a computer, i.e. hardware, configuration settings, etc.

WinAudit – one more analysis tool

Convert [Win, 155 kb] – fast metric unit conversion tool (distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass…)

UK Calender [Win, 321kb] – straightforward calendar with ToDo and reminders

CPU-Z [Win] – provides detailed info about your processor and other components

Country Codes [Win, 1358 kb] – a small database of country codes and additional information for all countries.

TreePad Lite [Win, 866kb] – personal database program, lets you store all your notes, emails, bookmarks, etc. into one well-structured file

StartupList [Win, 158 kb] – displays all items that are in any way related to your computer startup and are executed without any user interactions

eTextReader [Win, 279kb] – read plain text files provided by Project Gutenberg in a book-like manner.

Index Your Files [Win, 640kb] – provides an easy way to create index databases (of specified folders and drives) for quick file/term search

RockXP [win, 768kb] – handy utility for retrieving Win XP’s product key

WhoisThisDomain [Win, 42kb] – view owner and registration info for any domain name

Converter – portable unit convertsion utility

Portable Developer Tools (Techies Only)



Nvu [Win (7.3 mb), Mac (12 mb)] – easy-to-use webpage editor. Simpler alternative to Dreamweaver and Microsft Frontpage

Server2Go – apache webserver (no configurations needed)

InstantRails[Win, 60mb] – contains Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all preconfigured and ready to run.

Putty [Win, 0.9 mb] – lightweight telnet and SSH client

Follow-Me IP – displays your external IP address

XAMPP [Win, 25/17 mb] – integrated server package of Apache, mySQL, PHP and Perl. Just Unzip and Run

HTTP File Server [Win] – simple and easy-to-use file server for personal file sharing.

CurrPorts [Win, 46kb]- lets you view a list of ports that are currently in use, along with applications that use them

FTP Servers: Quick’n Easy FTP Server [Win, 355kb], PureFTPdManager [Mac, 10.9mb]

All-In-One Packages



PortableApps Suite [Win, 89.5mb] – includes 7 programs for essential needs (office, email, IM client, etc.) + cool Startup manager and backup utility

FSuite [Mac, 668.3mb] – over 30 useful tools in one file (Office, Graphic, Audio, Video, Internet, Developer Tools and Games)

Portable Operating Systems (’HowTo’ Articles)



Mac OS Classic 7

Portable Linux: Knoppix, Ubuntu, BackTrack.

Win XP

That’s mainly it… In case you’re looking for something that wasn’t mentioned above, there are a couple of resources you may want to check out. These are Portablefreeware.com and Tinyapps.org