Portable Software

If you haven’t heard, Flash Drives are not just for saving files anymore. You can also carry your useful software with you wherever you go. Below are a few Portable Apps which run directly from your Flash Drive.

Portable Firefox
For those that don’t know, Mozilla Firefox is one of the best web browsers on the market. How can you improve it? Make it portable. Mozilla Firefox is a fast, full-featured web browser that's easy to use. It has lots of great features including popup-blocking, tabbed-browsing, integrated search, improved privacy features, automatic updating and more. Plus, thanks to the PortableApps.com launcher bundled in Mozilla Firefox - Portable Edition, it leaves no personal information behind on the machine you run it on, so you can take your favorite browser along with all your favorite bookmarks and extensions with you wherever you go.

7-Zip Portable
If you ever need to open a zip file on a PC without Winzip or WinRAR, now all you have to do is pull out your Flash Drive. 7-Zip Portable is the popular 7-Zip packaged as a portable app, so you can take your file archiver with you and work with your compressed 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, RAR files and more on the go. You can place it on your USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive or a CD and use it on any computer, without leaving any personal information behind.

Portable OpenOffice.org
OpenOffice is the free alternative to Microsoft Office suite. It does almost everything Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint can without the bloat and expense. Making it portable only makes it that much better. Portable OpenOffice.org is the complete OpenOffice.org office suite -- including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database -- packaged as a portable app, so you can take all your documents and everything you need to work with them wherever you go.


There are many other portable applications available. Here are a list of a few of them found at PortableApps.com

GIMP Portable - Image program
ClamWin Portable - AntiVirus Program
FileZilla Portable - FTP Program
Miranda IM Portable - Instant Messenging Program
NVU Portable - Web Development Program
Sunbird Portable - Calendar/Todo
Thunderbird Portable - Email Program
Portable Gaim - Instant Messenging Program
VLC Media Player - Music/Video Player