100 Portable Apps

From Makeuseof
17 April, 2007 written by Aibek

These 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 one of ‘all-in-one’ packages for all essential tools in one package. While there are more apps for windows users, I tried to include mac versions 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) ]

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
Adress 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
K-Lite Mega Codec Pack with Media Player [Win] - another powerful media player for playing all conceivable 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 (support more then 400 image formats)
Inkscape [Mac, 24.6mb] - scalable vector graphics editor

Portable Browsers and Internet Tools
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
Gem Drop - fast-paced puzzle game
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 remainders
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 more than 250 countries.
TreePad Lite [Win, 866kb] - personal database program, lets you store all your notes, emails, bookmarks, etc. into one searchable 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

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
Hamachi
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
Win XP

USB ThumDrive Tips
How to create a bootable USB key
Never Forget your USB Stick
QuickLaunch your USB workspace

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