What exactly are portable applications vs "normal" apps with minimal installation

[tankman1989]

I just came across a bunch of portable apps/games/utilities and I'm trying to figure out if I want to download the portable versions or the normal versions.

Cany anyone shed any light on this topic?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Portable apps are as the name suggests....portable, meaning..they can be moved from computer to computer...keeping their settings/data. They don't install much on the host computer, nor do they leave data on the host computer.

Regarding your other thread about installing games on new build PCs for customers....you don't really need portable apps for that.

 

[MobileTechie]

Yeah in short it means they don't need to install before running. You can just double click on it and it runs rather than installing first and then running. I imagine you have a USB stick full or portable apps?

 

[tankman1989]

Yeah in short it means they don't need to install before running. You can just double click on it and it runs rather than installing first and then running. I imagine you have a USB stick full or portable apps?

I was under this impression as well and I know apps like ClamAV is a single file that runs the program and doesn't need installed. I see how that is portable. These apps/games from the Portableapps page requires the program to be installed and it is a mess of files. I am thinking that the portable part might be that it installs in a directory and all that has to be done is copy the directory as it doesn't make changes to the registry or install files outside it's own path. This way, I could install all the games once and then just copy the installed folder to the other machine.

Does that make sense?

 

[MobileTechie]

www.portableapps.com?

What that appears to be is a portable apps launcher with download, management, themes etc. The apps launcher isn't actually installed as such (ie is portable itself) as far as I can tell in that it doesn't appear in Programs and Features - it just creates some folders and an exe where you tell it to. Then you can run this launcher. From there you can get more apps and it just creates folders for each app and puts entries for them in an ini file.

At no point is anything installed. It's really just adding value to portable apps by making them easier to find, download and manage. If you put the whole thing on a USB stick you get a consistent interface for the portable apps you happen to like with only one exe to run initially. Kind of cool. Kind of pointless! You can also run any of the apps you've downloaded by going to their folder and running their exe.