Take It on the Road

One thing I have against the Tibetan support groups is that, in my experience, they're lousy at answering e-mail and real mail. I have items of concern or interest to discuss with them, but... So, today's discussion is something that will benefit them and you, the rapt reader. It'll benefit them because it's material that may come in handy when they're subjected to the next ChiCom cyber attacks, hacking, malware and the like. This will benefit you in less drastic situations, and also because it's just plain fun.

"What are you being a cowboy about today, Uncle Bob?"

I've already told you about the importance of backing up important files, and that there are many ways to do that, including flash drives, portable hard drives, discs and more. But what happens if your computer has been inconvenienced in some way? A virus disabled your virus scanner? Or if you're using another computer that doesn't have that important application that you need? Or if you need to service a computer?

Portable applications! These little dandies fit on a flash drive, just plug into a USB port and bada bing, you're off to the races. One part of Stormbringer Productions relies on portable apps. One of my favorites is PortableApps.com. Many of these are open source. All of them are free. If you start from the beginning and download the Platform application, you can install more applications through that, and you have a nifty launch menu for whatever you choose to install.

What can you get? Well, one of the big guns is OpenOffice.org. You would do well to consider installing the regular desktop version as an alternative to many MS Office applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and some others. It opens the MS applications, and also saves into formats that MS can read. This will save you a few hundred grotzits! Once you get the hang of it, you can get the portable version on your flash drive.

You can also get other word processing software, spreadsheet apps, "financial management", Firefox (I'm writing this on a portable version of Firefox), Pidgin (the multi-platform instant messaging thingie that lets you talk to friends on Yahoo, MSN, AOL and more), media players (audio and video), system tools (including a virus scanner) and much more.

I don't get a friggin' thing for telling you about this, either.

My friend says to me, "Hey, I can't make my computer work, it's got a virus!" So I plug in the flash drive with the portable apps, run Clam Win and zap his virus. Or I'm at a goomah's apartment and need to update my "Things You Should Know about Tibet and China" PowerPoint presentation. Pop in the flash drive, connect the portable hard drive, and I get to finish my project via Open Office. (I was successful on many levels that night, too.)

OK, there you go. Hope this proves useful. Check out PortableApps.com and see what they have to offer. There are other portable apps out there, but this site is selective and trustworthy. The others are probably good, but I can't recommend something I haven't tried myself, capice?

Addendum: Here's a link that's worth seeing.
Another addendum: A Weblog about Portable Apps that appeared the same day that I did mine is here. (You'll have to search for June 2, there's no specific link.)
Third addendum: another link is this one.