Flickr/Baldiri

Computers have become ubiquitous as well as indispensable. Where ever you go—be it office, at friends place or a sleepy town—there will be a computer that you can use. And in a country such as India it will almost invariably be running on a Windows platform. But then it might not have the application that you need or are just too used to use any other application.

Solution? Carry your own laptop or a slim netbook. But it might not be very appealing to carry a laptop all the time when you need it for a very brief period, say for sending an email.

You can choose to leave you laptop at home and just carry the portable versions of the applications on a USB stick. Portable apps will enable you applications on your USB and use it on other computers.

There are two options available for installing portable apps on your USB for use with a Windows PC:
1) Use PortableApps suite: This will allow you to access all the apps from a slick menu. will save you some hassle.
2) Install individual portable or executable versions of applications: This may be convenient if you plan to carry just a few apps or don't mind having to reach the folder in your USB drive to launch the portable app.

In the subsequent paras, you will find the details on using PortableApps suite for carrying your app. If you wish to install apps without relying on PortableApp suite, just click the portable app ".paf.exe" file and install it in a desired folder in your USB drive. You can also extract the executable versions of applications in the USB drive. Just mind to keep the folders organized so that you can access them easily. You can find portable versions of applications at PortableApps, Pendriveapps, Portable Freeware or App-Stick.

Using PortableApps platform for USB apps
Download any of the desired PortableApps suite—standard or lite. The standard version includes the base platform along with portable versions of Mozilla Firefox web browser, Mozilla Thunderbird email client, Mozilla Sunbird calendar/tasks application, ClamWin antivirus, Pidgin instant messaging client, Sumatra PDF reader and KeePass password manager. It also includes CoolPlayer+ for playing your audio music. PortableApps standard suite comes along with OpenOffice.org office suite, which includes the power of word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, database utility and drawing.
The lite version includes all the above except the OpenOffice suite. Instead, it comes with AbiWord word processor.

To install the PortableApps suite, just download the installer for the version and run it. You may install it in the main directory of your portable drive by choosing the USB drive letter. Installation may take up to 20 minutes if you are installing the standard version. The lite version will install faster.

Once installed, double-click the StartPortableApps.exe icon in your USB drive which will make an icon appear in your system tray. Click it to access an intuitive menu to launch your apps.

If the default portable apps do not suffice your requirements, you may download portable apps from PortableApps site and install on your PortableApps platform. To add an app, go to PortableApps main menu and click Options > Add a New App >Install. Now, select the “.paf.exe” file of the portable app that have downloaded.

The PortableApps platfrom will also work with other portable apps. For this you need to place them in a directory inside the PortableApps directory. So, you will have to create a directory within the X:\PortableApps directory and place it there. Then, click Options > Refresh App Icons within the PortableApps menu to see your new app there.

If the apps that come bundled in the two versions of PortableApp are not sufficient, you can download the desired portable applications from PortableApp site and install it.

Additional apps that you must install on your PortableApps suite.
VLC media player: VLC is known for its versatility. Give it any music or video, just any format, it will play it for you.
GIMP:GIMP is an open source image editor. Its portable version should be handy given the fact that not most people do not have an image editor installed on their PCs.
7-Zip: 7-Zip archive manager is an open source alternative, which is really powerful.

Some other suggested portable apps:
InfraRecorder: InfraRecorder will bring the power of burning discs to your portable system.
Eraser: Use Eraser to securely delete files and data.
JkDefrag: JkDefrag portable app will defragment and optimize your disks.
BonkEnc: Use BonkEnc to extract, encode and convert your audio files.
Audacity: Audacity is a simple, yet powerful, audio recorder. Use it to record voice or music being played on your computer.
FileZilla: FileZilla is for accessing FTP servers for uploading and downloading files.
Notepad++: Notepad++ is a full-featured text editor with syntax highlighting is quite popular among developers. Its a great altenative of Notepad that comes with Windows.
XAMPP: For geeky users, XAMPP is a known app that installs Apache, mySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin and more in an integrated package.