The Hindu Business Line : Power of portability

No matter where you are, you can always carry a pen drive with your portable applications. A USB drive gives you the convenience of running your applications on anyone’s PC, without disrupting the machine.

Try the following portable applications than can be run directly from your portable device and carry your favourite Web browser, instant messenger and other suite in your pocket always.

www.portableapps.com provides an open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc).

The Portable Apps Suite™ is free and has a collection of portable applications such as Web browser, email client, office suite, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client, antivirus, sudoku game, backup utility and integrated menu, all preconfigured to work portably. All you have to do is drop it on your portable device.

According to the Web site, PortableApps Suite comes with three editions viz, Standard, Lite and Base.

Standard Edition features ClamWin Portable (antivirus), Mozilla Firefox - Portable Edition (web browser), Gaim Portable (instant messaging), OpenOffice.org Portable (office suite), Sudoku Portable (puzzle game), Mozilla Sunbird - Portable Edition (calendar/task manager) and Mozilla Thunderbird - Portable Edition (email client). It runs comfortably from a 512MB drive. File size: 89.5MB (download).

Lite Edition uses AbiWord Portable (word processor) instead of OpenOffice.org Portable and runs comfortably from a 256MB drive. File size: 30.4MB (download).

Base Edition is a stripped down package with just the PortableApps Menu, PortableApps Backup utility and custom folders, icons and autorun. Since it is less than 1MB installed, it’s a great option for smaller drives. File size: 0.7MB (download)

Licence: Free/Open Source

System requirements: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista

***

Apart from the above, also check out the following portable utilities that can be handy and enrich your gadget companion.

Web browser

Green Browser is a free portable Internet browser that looks and functions much like Internet Explorer.

It makes for a simple alternative to portable firefox as well. The browser can be installed to and run from a portable USB device.

It has some key features such as ad filter, search bar, external toolbar, download manager, proxy setup, etc. It also comes with integrated search options. Green browser is open source software.

Download from www.5igb.com/StartEn.htm

Instant messenger

Miranda IM is a multi-protocol instant messaging client for Windows. It supports AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, Internet Relay Chat, MSN and Jabber.

Miranda also sports a plug-in system that allows you to include other instant messaging protocols such as Gadu-Gadu, Netsend, Skype, Yahoo and more.

The plug-in system also allows the user to add additional features such as clock, weather and RSS Feed Reader. This application can also be run portably from a USB flash drive or other portable devices. It is open source software.

Download from www.miranda-im.org

System requirements: Windows 95 / 98 / ME / NT / 2000 / 2003 / XP / Vista

IP info finder

IPNetInfo is a free utility that helps you find all the available information about an IP address i.e. the owner of the IP address, the country/state name, IP addresses range, contact information (address, phone, fax, and e-mail), and more. This is very useful for finding the origin of unsolicited mail. Simply copy the message headers from your e-mail software and paste them into IPNetInfo utility.

According to the Web site, IPNetInfo automatically extracts all IP addresses from the message headers, and displays information about these IP addresses. It is freeware.

Download from www.nirsoft.net/utils/ipnetinfo.html

System requirements: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/2003/Vista.

jaish@thehindu.co.in

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