Is portable winning?

[bzl333]

just wondering as i've only started using portable programs recently but are most things moving to portable?

[MiDoJo]

:blink: I'm not sure I even understand the query. Winning what? portablity is just code for you don't have to install it on a PC and can take it with you on your flash drive. So no, most commercial products (which wish to be tied to a single installation on a single machine) will not go portable.

[Hydaral]

Most commercial developers are not, I guess they think that if they make their apps portable it will make them easier to pirate. A portable Photoshop would be so good.

It seems like the freeware and, in particular, the open source communities are heading this way, albeit slowly. It's probably on most hobby developer's todo lists, but at a low priority, as it is usually quite a complex change and most users probably don't care.

This website appears to be pushing them though, quite a number of apps here are natively portable due to the members contacting the developers.

[bzl333]

thanks for the responses...i guess i should have made myself a little clearer on the "winning" part...

[webfork]

I have no way to empirically verify this, but my perception is that most developers see portability as a feature they can add, not a better way to write software. This is because software is rarely written from the ground-up so developers user various different components. They usually have to add something to clean up after components that misbehave.

Portable software will really start to "win" when developers' toolsets are more self-contained. While PortableApps has put together packaging tools that help, dotNET and Java frameworks continue to grow in popularity. These are easy to develop for, but not very portable. Additionally, most users expect an easy install/uninstall process and don't want to manage where the application lands. PortableApps' Launcher and Portable Application Launcher address this, but portable users remain in the minority.

There is plenty of reason for developers to move toward portable development. The advantages are much more than capability to run off a USB drive at the library or Internet cafe. Additionally, I think portable users tend to be more computer savvy and developers looking for feedback can benefit from their input.

[bzl333]

@ Webfork - thanks...your first post on that other thread about why you'd rather have portable apps sums it up for me:

"Starting over too often means you lose settings. Reinstalling Windows every 6 months because of registry buildup and other weird problems that develop over time means you have to reinstall programs anyway. Saving and restoring settings/preferences in 20 or 30 programs is just not something I'm willing to do."

that along with the start menu clutter...i finally gave up trying to organize the start menu(huge time waste with the icons and folders) and went with Launchy....i was hoping that some site like FileHippo would eventually be able to handle all the program updating but i guess not any time soon

[webfork]

your first post on that other thread about why you'd rather have portable apps sums it up for me

Glad that helped.

i finally gave up trying to organize the start menu(huge time waste with the icons and folders) and went with Launchy

I used to spend a great deal of time organizing and managing Windows interface to get it just the way I like it. Gradually I realized that all that time I was spending on customization was just getting thrown away and there was no effective way to get it back when the inevitable system refresh came around. Launchy is one good way around this.

[Crid]

This is a months-later reply to a dead thread....

Mostly because I never saw the word "cloud" in the earlier message stacks.

In at least some small consideration, cloud computing is the essence of portability... Except that it's not that portable when you're away from an RF source of some kind, and the sacrifices in privacy are intolerable.

I'm in my early fifties. When I was in my early twenties, the revelation of microcomputers was that you'd have your own processor, your own memory and your own storage, and what you did with it was nobody else's business.

The data-processing tragedy of my lifetime is that we're now drifting away from that spirit.

[m^(2)]

In at least some small consideration, cloud computing is the essence of portability... Except that it's not that portable when you're away from an RF source of some kind, and the sacrifices in privacy are intolerable.

Or your net is down.

[webfork]

The data-processing tragedy of my lifetime is that we're now drifting away from that spirit.

The hope is that by remotely mounting an encrypted volume, at least some of the privacy (if not the reliability) can be retrieved. Unfortunately, with the exception of TrueCrypt support for DropBox, that doesn't seem to be happening.

[webfork]

Although my post above points out a practical way to make at least one "cloud" service fully private, I wanted to add that Crid's point about the hope of the personal computer is drifting away:

With cloud services, there's much less expectation of privacy by both companies and the legal system. Its another example of a growing trend where you don't actually own things that you buy. The "first sale" doctrine in consumer protections is gradually fading away. You are instead "licensed" the services, software, hardware, and other components you use. It doesn't belong to you, you don't own it, and if the company of origin doesn't like how you use your product, they can cut you off or, in some cases, destroy the device you use to connect to their service.

I hope cloud-based services follow the Zimbra model with great web-based services that can also be run locally or inside a secure intranet. Zimbra is far from perfect, but its a step in the right direction for cloud-based tools.

[m^(2)]

I share your concerns.
Sadly, everybody seems to do their best to take away control of stuff from consumers. And what's worse, majority of people doesn't care. Almost everybody who I speak with about such problems seems ambivalent, even my own brother.

[Hydaral]

I share your concerns.
Sadly, everybody seems to do their best to take away control of stuff from consumers. And what's worse, majority of people doesn't care. Almost everybody who I speak with about such problems seems ambivalent, even my own brother.

Exactly the same thoughts here. My brother uses Gmail and doesn't seem to care about the lack of privacy. Although all his public information on Facebook is completely false, so it seems that some people consider it OK for privacy to be sacrificed for features.

[bzl333]

yeah i can't get away from Gmail either...just want something that checks the inbox every few minutes on its own and offers free POP or IMAP i guess so i could import to Thunderbird if necessary...

and i got tired of all these software subscription re-ups in Windows for AV, IDM, various security apps, Roboform, MS Office, and various MS OSes, and no OS re-install CD provided with new netooks/laptops, etc so i tried to move to Ubuntu but there are maybe 5% of the great freeware apps in Ubuntu/linux that there are on the Windows side, very disappointing...


as for the "cloud" i don't trust it....i realize that i am nothing but a schlub and any data i put up in the cloud is uninteresting but someday it will bite us....just like when everyone's money/net worth is eventually on computers - big big trouble down the line mostly from your own gov't....