Portable applications are useful. You do not need to install them, carry them along with all the settings, forget about platforms, configurations, settings and most important liscencing.
There are a number of techniques to make portable apps. Thinstall uses an Application Virtualization Technique to achive that purpose. VMWare recently acquired it and the application is now available as freeware (for the time being atleast) under the name of Project North Star.
The application usage is as simple as running the installer of an application first. NorthStar will trace all the exe’s, dlls, registry changes, filesystem changes, policy changes and package them all into one installer or exe with optional separate configuration that you could then run directly into any other platform.
If you also have some applications that are incompatible with Vista, you could install them under XP and using NorthStar you could run them under Vista (since it is virtualization).
A nice beginner tutorial is on youtube here.
Another video for how to run different versions of Internet Explorer on the same desktop machine can be found here.
Posted in Security, Security Testing, Virtualisation
