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.
interesting, but i disagree with you about the tutorial on you tube, i watched it and a few others – they were all bad and too hard to follow all the needed steps – because no-one bothers to use a microphone when making a video. its just wathcing a lot of quick mouse clicks – sometimes with load music, hmm that really helps!
By: elwoode on November 24, 2008
at 11:16 am
Cool Buddy!!!!!!!
By: Craig on March 18, 2009
at 11:58 am
You explained about VM Ware. Is it possibe to make portable apps without VM Ware? If so can you pls explain the steps of how to make a notepad portable..
By: Craig on March 18, 2009
at 12:11 pm
Notepad is already portable. Just copy it out of your windows folder onto a flashdrive.
By: Max on March 21, 2009
at 8:27 pm