Portable Applications vs. Installer Applications

[aimeeandbeatles]

For the terms of this, a "portable appliation" is one that doesnt need to be installed and that, if you put it on a USB drive and took it to another computer with the same OS, would work just fine with all your settings still there. It only writes to the program folder.

I thought this would be interesting to discuss. Do you prefer portable applications or ones that you install, or does it really matter? If you prefer one or the other, are you paritcularly religious about it? Are there any programs you keep both a portable and installed version of?

 

[GoodGame]

The usual problem with portable installations is they are a security risk for public networks. For students working in a protected 'public' network of a university, they're pretty handy when licensed software isn't available on every single computer in the university network.

I prefer having installer applications and direct control over their authorization.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

As I said, I'm not too fussy. There's a few advantages about portable applications though:

1. They're easier to backup as all the settings are in one place.
2. If a portable application doesn't work out for you it's easier to remove by just deleting. Although its usually the sign of a shoddily-programmed (or, in bad cases, disreputable) application some uninstallers leave junk behind.

For some programs I find it better to install.

 

[Zelig]

I never use portable applications.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Is there a particular reason or the types of applications you use just are not portable?

 

[Zelig]

From the Windows Software Logo Program:

All application data that must be shared among users on the computer should be stored within ProgramData

All application data exclusive to a specific user and not to be shared with other users of the computer must be stored in Users\<username>\AppData

In &#8220;per-machine&#8221; installations, user data must be written at first run and not during the installation. This is because there is no correct user location to store data at time of installation.

I'm a fan of best practices, and have no use for portable software.

 

[GoodGame]

It is interesting that the Windows-to-go feature associated with Windows 8 will be sort of a portable OS. It will be possible to run the OS from USB drive data and encrypt the data as well using BitLocker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go