If you work on more than one computer (e.g. home and work) then chances are that you have needed to transfer files or documents from one to the other. If you need to do it frequently then Dropbox makes this really easy by seamlessly synchronizing folders between computers and you can also access your files online. All you need to do is signup for a free Dropbox account.

Combining Dropbox with portable apps makes the ultimate portable solution, for instance as a password syncer. Another very nice feature of Dropbox is a “public” folder that makes files available online – all you need to do is to copy or save a file to that folder on your computer and it becomes publicly available link on the Web.

Their wiki also has a useful list of tips and tricks for using Dropbox.

Link: Dropbox

PuTTY is a popular free, open source Telnet and SSH client. Being open source there are many PuTTY variations, one of the more popular being portaPuTTY which I have recommended as an essential portable app before. I found a new favorite called PuTTY Tray: It is another variation of PuTTY, but offers some interesting features including:

If your system is suffering with performance issues or is simply cluttered with old applications then Revo Uninstaller could save you time vs. a full Windows reinstall. Revo Uninstaller shows you all applications and components installed on your PC and allows you to remove unwanted apps. It does a scan before and after the uninstall to find files, folders and registry keys that may have been missed during the uninstall process. In Hunter Mode, you can uninstall programs with one click or by simply dragging application shortcuts on your desktop or quick launch bar to the Revo Uninstaller system tray icon. A portable app version is now available so you can now run it from a USB drive without installing it.

In addition, Revo Uninstaller also comes bundled with other useful utilities like the Autorun Manager which let’s you enable or disable programs that autostart at Windows startup and the Junk Files Cleaner which scans and deletes temporary files that should have been deleted.

Revo Uninstaller is portable, free and with no spyware or tricks – a great productivity tool just the way we like it.

Revo Uninstaller (Look for the Portable version download link)

Portable apps have proven to be very popular and quite resilient in spite of the popularity of on-line apps. On-line apps like Google Apps, Zoho and Basecamp offer solutions for collaboration and portability, but there aren’t many good on-line solutions for applications like text editors, image editors, operating systems and browsers. Because of the need for these types of applications and the benefits of using USB apps I have been adding to my USB app collection. To be fair I have replaced some portable apps with on-line apps, e.g. I prefer Google Reader to GreatNews because desktop RSS readers become bloated and slow down as you add feeds, but at the same time I have discovered a few new portable applications. (more…)

Most people know that I am a portable app fan and that I would almost exclusively try to use portable applications or Web applications rather than “installs”. The problem with regular, non-portable applications is that they rely on the Windows registry and that they are typically distributed in many folders. So when you need to reinstall Window all your settings are lost and you need to completely reinstall the applications. In this post I would like to describe the reasons why I prefer portable apps and how you can manage them better. (more…)

Over the last couple of weeks I tested various note-taking applications. I was looking for software to help me to better organize my typical daily notes, memos, ideas, to-do lists and to clean up the myriads of text files that I have used for the purpose. KeePass is perfect for saving and organizing passwords, but there are many other important snippets of text that didn’t have a good home. The criterion is that I wanted a free, light-weight and portable note-taking application to help me be more productive. There are hundreds of on-line tools, but I prefer off-line tools for this purpose and I also discovered dozens of sticky note applications which I find generally messy. Wherever I looked, EverNote showed up and it turned out to be my favorite, but other applications that I reviewed include TiddlyWiki, NeoMem and wikidPad. (more…)

WordWeb is a free English dictionary and thesaurus application, and can be used to look up words in just one click. This is a very handy productivity tool and it’s really fast. I found their “for free use” licensing agreement quite amusing (though I fail on both accounts!):

You may use the program free of charge indefinitely only if
* You take at most 4 flights (2 return flights) in any 12 month period
* AND you do not own or regularly drive an SUV (sports utility vehicle).

I also like that it can be installed as a portable USB application (under Advanced Options during install).

Via Lifehacker

Crazypack contains a number of useful portable applications and in particular Google Talk and Opera Browser. Doing a search on Google for “Google Talk Portable” doesn’t bring back many promising solutions so I was quite happy to find this one (and it works). I preferred to not use the pstart that comes bundled with Crazypack, so I only copied the individual portable apps that I wanted to my USB drive.

WinSnap is a great little application that can replace regular Windows screen captures. Previously mentioned FastStone Capture is great for scrolling screen captures like Web pages in browsers, but WinSnap is great for regular CTRL+Prnt Scrn replacement. It can be configured to automatically modify the image border to rounded corners or PhotoShop-style shadows.  This is particularly useful for us bloggers who like to capture images and post them to our blogs. Older versions are free (for personal, educational and non-commercial use) and as a bonus they have a portable version, so this application needs to be added to my list of essential portable applications. The free version is available here.

You know how annoying it is when you try to Copy & Paste formatted text from some applications like Web browsers and Word docs into other applications like Excel or Outlook and the formatting also gets copied!? PureText is a free and very light-weight productivity tool that pastes text as "plain text" without formatting.

If you are used to using command line tools for Copy & Paste, i.e. CTRL+C to copy and CTRL+V to paste then this little tool is a gem: You simply copy as usual using CTRL+C, but instead of using the CTRL+V hot-key to paste, you use the WINDOWS+V hot-key. (The WINDOWS key is the key with the Windows logo to the left of the [most-left] ALT key). PureText can be configured to use another hot-key combination, but the default makes sense and works for me.

PureText – plain text copy and paste app.

Portable applications are becoming very popular and with good reason. Portable apps refer to applications that do not rely on registry settings and can run from USB memory sticks. That makes these applications easy to copy between computers and are therefore normally freeware. Another advantage is that they don’t need to be installed because they simply run from the folder where you downloaded and unzipped the files to. A beneficial side effect is that they don’t slow your computer down by adding registry settings and DLLs that are loaded into memory when the system starts up. The perfect application, in my opinion, is one that is free, portable, doesn’t require administrator priviledges and, of course, is useful. Here’s my list of essential portable apps and combined they take less than 512MB space. (more…)

The popular Sudoku game is avaliable at SourceForge in portable form so it requires no installation.

Sudoku Portable is a an addictive puzzle game originally created in France over 100 years ago. It features a 9×9 grid containing 9 3×3 grids. Within this you arrange the numbers 1 through 9. But, each number can only appear once in each of the 9 3×3 grids. And it can only appear once in each row and on each column. It’s a simple concept, but it can get addictive quickly.

Sudoku Portable – portableapps.com