Having problems installing software at office?

It is quite common in the work place for most of us that, we are not allowed to install any software (other than the company approved ones) on our work computers.

Technically, you can't install software on your work computer because, you don't have necessary privileges for it. We are only given the normal user privileges. Gaining the privileges of an administrator enables lot of features in the system. Like, you can install any software you want, you can change system files, you can change your boot options, and many more...

With Portable applications to your rescue, the first one is a problem no more. Now, what are these portable applications? As their name suggests, they are portable. Portable in the sense that, they can be carried from one place to another without losing any of that application related data. They need not be installed. They just need to be run! You don't need to be an administrator or some power user to install these applications on your system.

Imagine, you were working in the office and you are not done with your work yet. Now, you need to go home and continue your work from there. The only thing, you could have then wished is to carry your work environment with you (which may not be possible always).

Using portable application for your day-to-day activities gives you the ease and flexibility of carrying your environment with you always. You can carry them in a USB thumb drive even. Portable applications leaves NO trace on the system.

In short, using Portable applications offers these benefits:

• No special privileges or permissions required to install them.
• They leave NO traces behind on the system, they were used.
  
• Your productivity significantly increases as you carry your environment with you always.
  
• You can now safely do your work at a net-cafe or on a public computer.
• They can be run even from USB drives.
  
• A huge collection of portable software is available for free.
  

There is a vast suite of portable applications that are available for different purposes, including, OS's, anti-virus, games, browser, word-processors, pdf reader, cd/dvd creators, torrents, music organisers, remote connections, messengers, compression softwares, IP TV, VoIP.

Lot of softwares that I have earlier covered are available in portable formats too. Few very useful portable applications are Ubuntu, Knoppix, Pendrivelinux, Avast anti-virus, Claimwin, Opera, Firefox, Poker, Sudoku, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, GIMP, 7-Zip, Filezilla FTP, uTorrent, Putty, WinSCP, Tight VNC, Pidgin, InfraRecorder, Sumatra PDF Reader, foobar2000, Winamp, Yamipod (iPod alternative), etc.,

Useful Tip:

You can create a folder on the local hard-drive of the system you want to work and then copy the contents of the USB drive into that folder. This way, there is comparatively lesser wear-and-tear on the flash drives than from running those applications from them. Also that, read's and write's to and from the hard-drives are much faster. Once, your work is done, you can sync the folders on your hard-drive with the USB drives.