I recently took the opportunity to try out Portableapps. The premise of this collection of open source software is that you can use your software and store data on a thumb drive without leaving any personal information on the borrowed desktop computer. Each piece of software included is not trial software, but actually full-blown programs especially designed to operate from your portable drive.
You visit the portableapps.com web site and download the main suite. The executable program downloaded to your program will extract the main menu and applications onto your portable device. A thumb drive will probably be the most obvious choice, but you can also use a portable disk drive or even your iPod.
The base suite includes Open Office, Firefox, and a couple games and utilities. You can easily add more programs listed through the site. The choices are limited to open-source software. These full versions are free of any advertisements or spyware.
I tried Portableapps out on a new 1 gigabyte thumb drive. The main menu application starts up immediately when you insert the drive in a Windows computer. A simple menu pops up in the lower-right hand screen, and disappears to a tray icon when it is not being used.
I tried out a couple of Open Office applications as well as two versions of Firefox. Everything worked very well. Some extensions but not all worked in Firefox. The main problem was speed. The convenience of having my data and favorite applications close at hand were off set by an incredibly slow computing experience. I did not expect overwhelming speed, but it was sometimes difficult to use the applications do to waiting for actions to complete.
If you are looking for applications to use when you borrow someone else’s computer try out portableapps. It seems to be the most-thought-out system that I have seen so far. Just be sure to bring your patience with your thumb drive.