With this article we make a nice list of the best portable programs that can be downloaded from the internet, all for free. When we talk about portable or portable applications or "portable apps" we refer to those applications or programs that are not installed on the PC, and that, once downloaded, must only be extracted from the .zip or .rar archives and are immediately usable .
Basically, not installing a program means that no reference to the presence of these programs is recorded in the computer, in the registry keys or in the system files, which therefore work independently on the system without leaving any traces.
Let's take an example to understand what it means: download an internet browser like Firefox portable, copy the files to any folder and start it.
I surf the internet with Firefox portable, all history, cookies, temporary files etc. etc., are stored inside the folder where I had copied the portable Firefox files.
If these files were in a folder copied to a USB stick, all the files that are created during the use of portable Firefox remain in that folder, therefore nothing is left on that PC.
When I use this portable browser again on a pen drive, on another PC, I will find myself memorized all the history, cookies, favorites and so on.
A portable application is important today because it is a program that, if kept inside a USB stick, can be used on any computer, without installing anything and without touching that computer, without creating files, without modifying its registry keys, without that, on that pc, nothing is stored, if not, in case, access to Windows or Mac that it is.
You become completely anonymous and you avoid dispersing information on external computers.
If it is now clear what the "Portables apps" are for, let's consider their importance in light of the fact that today an 8 GB USB stick costs 15 Euros and is within everyone's reach.
My advice is therefore to install a complete environment, consisting of a series of programs familiar to the user, so that wherever you are and whatever PC you use, at school, at work, in an internet point, there you are always with your habits, your applications and your personalized settings.
Each portable application must be downloaded and consists of a compressed file; in extracting the files included in it, on the USB stick we can therefore create a "Program Files" folder in which to copy the extracted files.
For example with, once downloaded Firefox portable, I double click and say to the extraction program (not installation) that asks where to save the files, to copy them in the folder still to be created, X: / Programs / Firefox.
The best portable programs to be copied to the USB stick, which can be downloaded for free individually, are:
1) Office, Notepad and PDF reader
- LibreOffice portable latest full version of Word, Powerpoint, Excel and all the normal office suite, which does not require installation and can be used with your own personal configurations. [Win (120 mb) / Mac].
- AbiWord, a program identical to Microsoft Word for absolutely functional and fast video writing. [Win (6.3 mb) / Mac (9.5 mb)]
- PDF document reader : Sumatra [Win (1.1 mb)] or Foxit PDF Reader [Win, (1.8 mb)]
- Notepad ++, the best free and opensource notepad explained in detail in a dedicated post.
2) Portable browsers are listed on another page with 15 different alternatives including Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.
3) Email, chat and reading mail
- Mozilla ThunderBird - [Win (6 mb), Mac (20.5 mb)]
- Skype USB the Skype portable client
- Pidgin Portable sees not only Windows live messenger but also, if configured, Facebook (see other article for chat programs with Facebook) and Twitter.
4) Multimedia players for audio and video, for mp3 music and films with all codecs
- VLC [Win (9.3 mb), Mac (24 mb)].
- PotPlayer, great program to watch videos and movies on the computer, now also portable.
- In addition to Winamp portable there are other better portable mp3 players to listen and organize music on a USB stick including Foobar2000 and AIMP.
5) View edit and browse photos of any type and image editing
- Irfanview, the best image viewer on Windows
- GIMP portable [Win (8.6 mb), Mac (87.5 mb)] best alternative to Photoshop for photo editing (see article on Gimp for more information).
- XNView [Win, Mac, Linux] supports all image formats and is one of the best image and photo viewer programs
6) Program to download torrents in peer-to-peer
- UTorrent to download torrents from the internet.
7) Ipod management
- YamiPod [Windows] quick and effective program (see here for the management of Ipod without Itunes)
8) Full hardware view
- SIW that we talked about in the article on how to test a computer's hardware.
- WinAudit useful application to get information on which pc you are using.
- CPU-Z to have a detailed analysis of the processor and its use.
9) Network
- Follow-Me IP shows the external ip address.
- Supremo is a portable program for connecting in remote desktop to another computer.
- PortableTor to surf anonymously on the internet, discussed in detail in another article.
- NirLauncher is the entire collection of Nirsoft programs for sniffing and recovering settings and passwords on the internet.
- Network Scanner to scan the network and find resources shared by other computers.
10) Hacking
- All the password recovery applications are portable and that concern the internet, messenger and everything related to access to the LAN.
- Portable are also the tools to find passwords under the asterisks on the internet.
11) For developers
- Kompozer visual editor for drawing web pages very similar to Dreamweaver, portable, for Linux and Windows
- Server2Go - A simple Apache webserver
- Putty [Win, 0.9 mb] - light ssh or telnet client
- FileZilla, the program to transfer files via FTP
12) Various utilities
- In another post, the best portable antivirus including: ClamWin [Win, 5.9mb] a really small but efficient antivirus, after having "installed" it, you need to download the updates.
- Portable programs for recovering data from a PC that has problems starting up:
Portable tools to repair Windows.
- Eraser Portable: very useful program that allows you to permanently delete any file.
- Recuva to recover files that have been deleted
- On Screen Keyboard keypad to prevent keyloggers from intercepting what is written on the keyboard; we talk a lot about this article on how to move to protect bank and important data on the pc
- Country Codes [Win, 1358 kb] Small database with codes and important information on all the countries of the world
- Converter tool for converting units of measure and coins
- Convert [Win, 155 kb] always for the units of measure
- PStart - To create a sort of key start menu and organize the start of programs.
- Restoration [Win, 229kb] to recover deleted files .
- 7Zip to open all archives, zip rares and everything else.
- Deep Burner Portable is the best portable program to burn and copy CDs and DVDs and CD images.
Alternatively, the Infra Recorder is also excellent.
- Virtual CD Control Panel to create disk images without having to install permanent drivers on the PC.
- Audacity, program to edit audio tracks.
- CDEX to convert audio cd to mp3 files.
- License Crawler, to find all the purchase codes or product keys of the installed software.
- Ccleaner, the program to clean up Windows from unnecessary files
- CDBurnerXP, the best program to burn CDs and DVDs
- VirtualDub, the best free and open source program to edit videos.
- Avidemux, another very powerful and versatile video editing program.
How many more do you know?
I will keep this list updated every time there is a new application to copy to the USB stick, I hope you will follow my advice because having a software environment to take anywhere, believe me, is really comfortable.
For a more concise list, look at the 10 best USB programs without installation.
Alternatively, you can download and copy the suite of portable programs that contain all the best and most useful tools and software.
READ ALSO: How to turn the USB stick into a PC
