Portable App Review
I've posted before about having trouble keeping track of which headlines I've seen for all of the RSS feeds that I currently watch. Another problem that I have is keeping all of my bookmarks reasonably synchronized between machines (desktop, laptop, my box at work...), both in term of the bookmarks that I have and those bookmarks' organization (e.g., "Did I put the link to the Mozilla SVG Project in the XML folder, or in the Open Source folder on this particular browser?")
Several solutions to these types of problems exist - for example, BlogLines for RSS feeds, and of course del.icio.us for bookmarks - but most (all?) of the ones that I've seen are web-based. It's not that being web-based is a problem, it's just not what I consider an ideal solution to my particular problems. One of the major reasons that I started using Thunderbird and Firefox is the fact that they have extremely similar and fairly user-friendly interfaces, as well as the fact that Thunderbird allows me to read my email and my feeds; thus, it would seem that using 2 different web services to organize my information, in addition to both Firefox and Thunderbird, is a step backwards. (If you don't know why, scroll to the top of the page and read carefully...)
The bottom line is that I've been unsuccessful in finding a solution to either of these problems - until now. Enter Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird - versions of their respective programs that are able to be installed on a USB key. "But why not just install regular Firefox on a USB key?", you ask? Well, the short answer to that is that this approach doesn't quite work. While the binaries in this case would in fact be stored on the USB key, all of the "Profile" information would be stored on the local hard drive of the machine on which the install took place. Thus, when trying your USB key installion on another machine, surprise!, all of your bookmarks have disappeared! The same goes for Thunderbird's account information, including all of the RSS feeds that you spent an hour entering in by hand since Thunderbird doesn't support OPML imports (yet!). The portable versions of these two programs essentially are configured such that all data that they need to operate - including bookmarks, address books, and account information - is stored directly on the USB key.
The downside to this arrangement is speed. My machine at home has two 10,000RPM Western Digital Raptors, arranged in a RAID-0 configuration, and disk speed is something that I've come to take for granted. My USB key, on the other hand, is a chinsy 128MB piece of crap that I bought for 10 bucks or so on sale at a MicroCenter. This is important to note, as access times differ between USB keys. Essentially, this means that using either of the programs off of the USB key - Thunderbird in particular - is painfully slow at times. However, both of the portable apps are beta versions, and the speed issue is the only problem I've had so far. I think that furture releases have the potential to be much faster, and I plan on (hopefully) getting a new USB key before too long, anyway - hopefully one with some kind of security features, since I plan on toting my email around with me.
All in all, I give both of these apps (and their developer, John Haller), a hearty thumbs up, and I look forward to checking out a couple of John's other projects (Portable Nvu, Portable OpenOffice.org).
Several solutions to these types of problems exist - for example, BlogLines for RSS feeds, and of course del.icio.us for bookmarks - but most (all?) of the ones that I've seen are web-based. It's not that being web-based is a problem, it's just not what I consider an ideal solution to my particular problems. One of the major reasons that I started using Thunderbird and Firefox is the fact that they have extremely similar and fairly user-friendly interfaces, as well as the fact that Thunderbird allows me to read my email and my feeds; thus, it would seem that using 2 different web services to organize my information, in addition to both Firefox and Thunderbird, is a step backwards. (If you don't know why, scroll to the top of the page and read carefully...)
The bottom line is that I've been unsuccessful in finding a solution to either of these problems - until now. Enter Portable Firefox and Portable Thunderbird - versions of their respective programs that are able to be installed on a USB key. "But why not just install regular Firefox on a USB key?", you ask? Well, the short answer to that is that this approach doesn't quite work. While the binaries in this case would in fact be stored on the USB key, all of the "Profile" information would be stored on the local hard drive of the machine on which the install took place. Thus, when trying your USB key installion on another machine, surprise!, all of your bookmarks have disappeared! The same goes for Thunderbird's account information, including all of the RSS feeds that you spent an hour entering in by hand since Thunderbird doesn't support OPML imports (yet!). The portable versions of these two programs essentially are configured such that all data that they need to operate - including bookmarks, address books, and account information - is stored directly on the USB key.
The downside to this arrangement is speed. My machine at home has two 10,000RPM Western Digital Raptors, arranged in a RAID-0 configuration, and disk speed is something that I've come to take for granted. My USB key, on the other hand, is a chinsy 128MB piece of crap that I bought for 10 bucks or so on sale at a MicroCenter. This is important to note, as access times differ between USB keys. Essentially, this means that using either of the programs off of the USB key - Thunderbird in particular - is painfully slow at times. However, both of the portable apps are beta versions, and the speed issue is the only problem I've had so far. I think that furture releases have the potential to be much faster, and I plan on (hopefully) getting a new USB key before too long, anyway - hopefully one with some kind of security features, since I plan on toting my email around with me.
All in all, I give both of these apps (and their developer, John Haller), a hearty thumbs up, and I look forward to checking out a couple of John's other projects (Portable Nvu, Portable OpenOffice.org).
posted by cliff at 10:55 AM
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