Photo: laffy4k

Portable Apps are free, open source applications for Windows that have been repackaged so that they do not need to be installed. They can therefore be copied to and used from a USB key (thumb drive), a portable hard drive or even an iPod (mounted as a disk).

If you work in a context similar to my school, these can be very useful. I usually bring my laptop to school, but when I don’t I have to work on one of the shared computers. Since only the PhD students have access to them, we share one account with admin privileges. Basically, it means that we can install anything we want so you can imagine that all kinds of toolbars are installed in every browser. It also means that there’s no point in setting your preferences since somebody is probably going to change them the next time.

Portable Apps offer a great solution for this situation or for a situation where you are not allowed to install anything on the computer. Many portable apps are available, here are the ones that might be the most useful for students:

• Firefox: Keep your browser, your extensions and your bookmarks with you. I recommend installing the Google Browser Sync to keep your bookmarks in sync with your home computer.
• Thunderbird: Sure, you probably can access your emails over the web, but if you prefer to use an email software, Thunderbird is the way to go.
• Miranda IM: For those addicted to instant messaging, Miranda IM is a client compatible with most networks (MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Google Talk).
• Pidgin: Another cross-network IM client.
• OpenOffice.org: Take a full office suite with you wherever you go.
• Abiword: Another word processor compatible with Microsoft Word.
• Sumatra PDF: A lightweight pdf viewer.
• Notepad++: A text editor with syntax highlighting support for many languages, including LaTeX.
• 7-Zip: A compression utility with support for Zip, Tar, Rar, 7z and more.
• Clamwin: An antivirus.
• PuTTY: A Ssh and Telnet client.
• Filezilla: An FTP client for your file transfer needs.