Portable Applications in Windows XP: Which Ones to Use

I was assembling a list of preferred Windows XP applications.  Part of my goal was to replace installed apps with portable apps where possible.  Doing so had the advantages of getting back up and running much more quickly, whenever I would have to reinstall Windows; reducing system problems due to misbehaving applications; and having my favorite tools available, in my preferred configuration, when I had to use someone else's computer.  With the emergence of cloud computing, among other things, there had been a trend toward the virtualization of applications -- toward, that is, making apps less dependent upon a single piece of hardware.
So now I was engaged in a search for applications that would replace some of those I had traditionally installed on my Windows XP systems.  In my search, I found there were many sources of portable apps, including the categorized and somewhat ranked set in Andrew Lee's Portable Freeware Collection.  I used these sources to supplement and revise the set that I had started with, from PortableApps.com.  It seemed likely that I would continue to add preferred portable apps from various sources indefinitely.  In that sense, this post can only be a step along the way.  Even so, by this time I had accumulated enough applications to say a few things on the subject.

Microsoft Office and Alternatives 

Perhaps the single most important thing to say was that there were substitutes for Microsoft Office.  This was important because it permitted some freedom from dependence upon Microsoft programs.  I had already achieved some such freedom by switching to Ubuntu as my operating system and by running Windows XP within VMware virtual machines (VMs) on Ubuntu/WinXP dual-boot machines.  Through that step, I had multiple alternatives, whenever Microsoft Windows and/or Office failed me:  I could run Microsoft Office, or the freeware OpenOffice alternative, on either Windows or Ubuntu, either natively or virtually.  After that, there were very few times when I was substantially unable to get work done because of some software failure arising from Microsoft software.

The next step in that regard was to move away from treating either Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office as my primary operating or office system.  Where Windows was concerned, I had recently concluded that the computing world, and I, had not yet come up with a superior end-user alternative for PC-based (as distinct from e.g., Apple) systems.  There were far more, and far more useful, software applications available on Windows than on Ubuntu or other varieties of Linux.  But in the case of Office, it did increasingly appear that there were superior alternatives -- notably OpenOffice.  Then, too, I was among those keyboard-oriented users who were put off by the mouse-oriented ribbon that debuted in Office 2007.  In any event, I had had too many experiences with malfunctioning computer installations that desperately needed to be reinstalled, but that I was currently unable to reinstall because it would take too many hours to install and adjust Office and other heavyweight programs.

The current search for portable apps pushed me further in the direction of seeking an alternative to Microsoft Office.  As described in a separate post, people were struggling with the non-portability of Office 2003 and 2007.  Some pursued the option of downloading a presumably bootleg copy of Microsoft Office that was somehow converted into portable format.  That option (as noted in that other post) entailed considerable risk of viral infection, instability, and inflexibility.  Another option, which I did pursue, was to create my own portable version from my own copy of Office.  That, too, did not turn out well, primarily because the software capable of doing it properly was still too expensive.  Since I considered portability a real benefit, I was thus even more motivated to take seriously the OpenOffice alternative, which was freely available in Windows-based portable form.

Other Top Portable Apps 

Of course, there is more to the world than office productivity software.  A complete set of portable apps must depend on the needs of the individual user.  But it may be possible to select some, from among the estimated 150 categories displayed in the Portable Freeware Collection, from which a typical user might want to draw at least one portable app.

In preparing this list, I excluded many categories that did not interest me and/or in which I was not knowledgeable.  Among these excluded categories (to name a few) were those having to do with iPods, mp3 tags, games, and IM.  Also, in some instances, I took more than one example from a category (especially from categories with grab-bag names like "miscellaneous"), or took something other than the top-ranked program.  I have also used my own category headings, rather those supplied by the PFC website.  In short, this list is offered for purposes of interest, not precision.

Audio and Video

XMedia Recode
Audacity
IrfanView
Duplicate Music Files Finder
VirtualDub Portable
VLC
XBlender

Images, Graphics, Scanning

Photoscape
Dia
Softi FreeOCR

CD/DVD

ImgBurn
Virtual CDRom Control Panel
WinToFlash
Folder2Iso
BonkEnc

Files and Folders

Multi File Tool
7-Zip
TreeSize
Duplicate File Finder
ICE ECC
FreeCommander
FileCommander 
Undelete Plus
Bulk Rename Utility
Index Your Files
Unlocker

Backup and Synchronization

Toucan
FastCopy
ozSync

Downloading, FTP

Free Download Manager
FileZilla
WinHTTrack
uTorrent
VDownloader

Security & Privacy

PortableTor
Blowfish Advanced CS
ClamWin Portable
KeePass
CCleaner
Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder

Web Browsers

Firefox
Opera
FireTune
Opera Settings Import & Export Tool

PDF

Scan2PDF
Foxit Reader
Swift PDF

Registry Editing

Registry Commander
Regshot
RegFromApp
RegScanner

Remote Collaboration

ShowMyPC
TeamViewer

Bookmarks

TrayURL
AM-DeadLink

Fun & Entertainment

Raindrop
Sumotori Dreams
Wallpaper Randomizer

System Information

SIW 
PC Wizard 
Autoruns

Calendar & Time

Sunbird
TimeSync

General Reference

Convert
WeatherMate

HTML & Text Editing

KompoZer
HTML Portable Editor
Notepad++

Onscreen

ClipX
PNotes
SysExporter
Virtual Magnifying Glass

Phone & Email

Thunderbird
Skype

Math & Statistics

SpeedCrunch
R

Productivity & Desktop Layout

OpenOffice
WinTabber
VirtuaWin

Other

RamBooster
Stalled Printer Repair
EjectUSB
JkDefrag
AutoIt
Don't Sleep
PStart
Scribus
DSpeech

Portable Apps: OpenOffice as an Alternative to Microsoft Office

I was in the process of assembling a set of portable applications to run in Windows XP.  After some investigation and experimentation, I concluded that there was not presently a solid, affordable way of making a portable version of my copy of Microsoft Office 2003.  Since I did want office-type programs in my set of portable apps, I decided to look into alternatives to Office.

One alternative, of course, was to upgrade to a more recent version of Microsoft Office.  In the case of Office 2010, there were (as with Office 2003) various offers of free downloads of a portable version.  Some of these offers seemed to be related to an offer of a free trial that Microsoft had floated in 2009.  Others were apparently pirated versions, typically with little explanation of how the portability had been achieved.  I did not investigate the question of how well these copies would work.

Since acquiring Softricity, Microsoft itself had moved toward developing application virtualization for purposes of facilitating enterprise software installation.  Of course, that was a long way from setting up Office to run from a USB stick.  At this writing, Microsoft's concept of portability was oriented toward portable devices (e.g., phones, laptops).  Office 2010 did come with "portable device rights" in this sense.  There did seem to be one way to install Office 2010 on a USB drive with Microsoft's blessing, more or less:  obtain and install Office 2010 Starter Edition, and then install Starter Edition on a USB drive.  Starter Edition was adware; it replaced Microsoft Works; it consisted solely of limited versions of Word 2010 and Excel 2010; and it was officially available only a preloaded software on purchased computers.  There were ways to download it otherwise.

I had several reasons for not choosing the Microsoft option.  Those reasons included a need for some advanced features, a need for the ability to work with other kinds of files, especially via PowerPoint and Access, a desire to avoid the distraction of adware, and a preference for not being dependent upon Microsoft.  This was not to say that I would avoid using Office 2010 altogether.  I just wanted something that would work effectively on a USB drive.

Another alternative to Office 2010 was to move away from Microsoft altogether, to the extent possible.  There were several apparently significant alternatives to choose from.  The most popular still seemed to be OpenOffice.  The OpenOffice suite continued to have the advantage of being usable on multiple platforms -- so that, for instance, I could still get into a file, via Ubuntu Live CD (or dual boot, or virtual underlayer), even when Microsoft Windows or Office became completely nonfunctional.  OpenOffice also included programs that would work with those varieties of files just mentioned (i.e., Access databases, PowerPoint presentations).

One question, for me, was whether OpenOffice would display the relatively unrefined kind of interface and functionality that had recently prompted me, despite myself, to lean back toward using Windows rather than Ubuntu applications (even if I was doing so primarily in Windows running within a VMware virtual machine on Ubuntu).  If I had ever used OpenOffice in Windows, it had been a long time ago; in recent years I had only used it in Ubuntu, and very infrequently at that.  So now I took another look.  I did a brief trial run of OpenOffice Writer Portable for Windows, running from a hard drive, just to sample its look and feel.  Preliminarily, it looked and felt good -- noticeably better and more familiar than the Ubuntu version, though no doubt the two actually functioned pretty much the same.  On this basis, I decided to go ahead with some efforts toward using OOo (as they call it, short for OpenOffice.org) Writer more frequently.

Portability, another question, was a no-brainer.  The version that I had just sampled was part of the PortableApps.com standard suite.  The concept was that I would set up my full portable suite on the hard drive, so as to avoid having to install programs whenever I set up a new computer or virtual machine, and then I would copy that folder of portable apps to the USB flash drive when I needed to take those tools on the road -- with my laptop or to someone else's computer.  With this concept in mind, I returned to my effort to come up with a good set of portable applications for Windows XP.