You should never to busy to geek about.
Despite (maybe because of!) the fact that I'm still woefully unprepared for my year-long trip to Georgia that starts Monday, I managed to waste a whole day dicking around with PortableApps.com.
But this is seriously cool stuff guys.
The idea is that you should be able to place your whole life, both data and programs, on a USB key, that you should be able to stick the key into any computer, and that you should be able to keep working (or playing) exactly where you left off the last time.
Thanks to the way "modern" software works this is not as easy as it sounds. In this scenario there is no registry persistence. If the program writes data or preferences anywhere but the USB key, then that stuff is not gone when you leave that particular computer (actually, depending on your privileges on the machine, you may not be able to write off the USB key at all).
The solution? Well, the folks at PortableApps.com "portableize" a bunch of popular open source and other free software so that it runs in this mobile scenario. They modify open source software to run this way and free closed software they wrap in another program that handles the portableization issues (they figure out where the program stores its slime trail and restore and save it before and after the program runs).
Sounds wacky, right? Well, they do a pretty amazing job! So far everything works as advertised: no crashes, no installations problems, it just works. They've even got an portable program launcher and data browser that automatically fires up when you stick in the key.
But despite all this sophistication everything works they way things used to before "modern" software. You add programs by copying files and you delete them by deleting files. No crappy installers that do god-knows-what to your computer. You feel your working on, if not on a Commodore 64 or VIC-20, at least an Apple IIe or the original Macintosh.
The best part is that PortablApps.com themselves has portablized Firefox and and Rob Loach has portablized Google Talk (if you're still without them you can get non-portable Firefox from the link on the sidebar and non-portable Google Talk from here)!
Groovy! Now I can walk up to any computer and stick my head in the web and browse and chat just the way I like.
The downside? Well, performance sucks. Who would have thought that non-mechanical storage could be this slow! It's so slow it's painful! It seems to me now the only reason people put up with their USB keys at all, is because they don’t actually use them. But that’s OK too; there is a solution: instead of a USB key I put the everything onto a 2.5" portable hard disk and now it flies (and the disk still fits in a shirt pocket).
Oh and one last thing: if you customized your regular Firefox as I described here, and you want to customize your portable Firefox as well, there is only one change in the instructions: the userChrome.css goes P:\PortableApps\FirefoxPortable\Data\profile\chrome (where P is your portable drive).
I can hardly wait till the folks at PortableApps.com portablize Linux!
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