Portable Apps Suite: A Powerful (and Free) Alternative to Software Bloat Taking It All With You Wayne Kawamoto
Taking It All With You
While the applications are small, their load times depend on the storage medium that you are using. In particular, when the portable apps are loading from a slow flash memory drive, they tend to slog along.
Of all the applications, the Portable AbiWord ran the slowest. It seemed to want to constantly access the flash drive, which caused it to bog down. Of course, if you run the applications off of a fast external hard drive, your load times will be much quicker. Keep in mind that beyond flash memory and external hard drives, you can use any portable media to store and transfer the applications, including iPods and memory cards.
Installation is easy. You simply download a compressed file and unzip it. As it decompresses, the program creates a folder with icons of the respective programs that you can double-click to call them up. The decompression process also creates respective data folders for each application. The suite doesn't install executable icons on your desktop — you use either "My Computer" or "Windows Explorer" to access your memory drive and double-click the applications to run them.
You can save your documents, settings, and data to the flash memory drive that stores the software. Most of the programs, such as Portable Sunbird, for example, automatically save their data to their own folders on the memory card. This makes them easy to take along and carry from computer to computer.
Other applications, such as AbiWord, try to save documents to the standard "My Documents" folder on the computer's main hard drive. As a result, when you're working with AbiWord, you do have to remember to check and possibly change the directory you're saving a document to if you want to take it with you.
The version evaluated for this review had a known issue. When running under Windows 2000, the OpenOffice.org applications could have trouble opening and saving data on some computers. According to the program's web site, this problem will be fixed in future versions. Speaking of technical issues, because the suite is free, don't expect to be able to call tech support should you encounter a problem-there is no formal tech support. But you can access online networks for casual assistance.
The Bottom Line
It's refreshing to come across software that is compact, takes up little space and minimal resources, can be carried from computer to computer, and still offers enough features to do the job. And it's free. What is there that's not to like?
On the other hand, in the real world, it's hard to wean oneself from a Microsoft Office or Corel WordPerfect Office, and even more difficult for a company or organization to make the switch. But the Portable Apps Suite offers a set of competent applications that do an admirable job, especially given the price. And in this case, bigger is not necessarily better.
Pros: Freeware (open source), suite offers solid collection of useful applications, all applications are portable and can fit onto a flash memory drive (or similar) that can be carried and used from computer to computer
Cons: Depending on the storage medium, applications can be slow to run; some apps lack the power features found in competing mainstream utilities; no tech support available
