subject: 5 Must Have Portable Applications on Your External Drive [print this page] 5 Must Have Portable Applications on Your External Drive
Portability has become a necessity with software as prices of external drives have plummeted over the years and thus today, most computer users possess one. A lot of applications have special portable versions which differ with the usual version with preferences stored in the installation folder instead of the host computer's registry thus making the software executable anywhere with personalized options. Below are 5 applications that could come in very handy on your portable device.
1. Mozilla Firefox
2. Mozilla Firefox is in my opinion the best browser, with the sheer personalization it offers with add-ons, themes, security, privacy and the relatively fast browsing speeds having the portable version of Firefox on your portable device with your personalized bookmarks, settings, passwords, etc. allows you to surf conveniently anywhere. There are around 2 or 3 versions of portable Firefox available; I found the version by PortableApps to work best. VLC Media Player
3. It is not unusual to use another computer to find it using a media player with a crippled codec package that fails to play several file formats. VLC is one of the most popular media players known for its simplicity and its ability to play 'anything'. A portable version is available, developed by PortableApps. With VLC on your external device you can be sure you will be able to play any media in any computer. WinRaR Unplugged
4. This is a portable version of the popular file compression tool. WinRaR has proved to offer the best compression and having a good compression tool on your portable device can come in handy if you need to fit a big file into your external device and also where a computer does not have a specialized file compressor installed. GSplit
5. Gsplit a powerful utility that lets you split larger files for the purpose of portability. If you own multiple external devices with relatively small capacities this tool may come in handy if you are looking to copy a file larger than the size of your external devices. A portable version is available by the developer. Foxit Reader
It surprises me that while PDF is a popular format for managing documents and ebooks several computers don't have a PDF reader installed, Foxit is one of the most popular PDF readers known for its simplicity, it's a standalone file and thus portable and should come in handy on your portable device if you happen to stumble upon a PDF file on a computer that does not have a PDF reader installed.
Download VLC Player to compare and see all its features and the media playable.
