Portable Apps – Are They A Good Idea?

With more and more of us managing an online life and working on more than one computer, managing files, documents, emails and safely, securely and easily is really important. If you’re at work you want an environment that’s the same every time you use it, but customisable to keep you working efficiently. Your boss will want a secure way for you to work quickly and effectively, with minimum distraction.

So how can you ensure that you’re not constantly adjusting from computer to computer, wasting valuable time in setting things up the way you like? Portable apps have emerged as a great way to keep the tools you use daily, just way that you use them, all of the time.

So what exactly is a portable app?

A portable application, or portable app for short, is simply a computer program not much different to the one you’re using now, just with a couple of changes made so you can transfer it from computer to computer with little hassle – you don’t even need to take them off of things like external hard drives or promotional USB sticks.

Usually, when you want to use a program, you have to either get it from the internet or via a CD or other means, wait for it to install, set it up, and then repeat this process everywhere you go. With portable applications, your application is ready to go all of the time. You download it once (on a promotional USB stick given to you a while back by your favourite client, for example) set it up and you’re good to go. You can run portable applications right off of things like promotional USB sticks without needing to make any changes to the computer you’re using. Good for you because it’s less hassle, and good for the person who owns the computer you’re using because you’re not changing anything.

Other Important Points You Should Know

A computers’ hard drive (rather than a little flash drive) can also leave a paper trail of details behind that can be used by cyber criminals. If you forget to log out of your email on a library computer then who knows who could access your information. Portable apps work in the sense that you take ALL of your data with you, meaning nothing is saved permanently to the computer you’re using. By forgetting to log out of your email with a portable application, all you’re doing is saving yourself from having to log in on a new computer!

Portable applications come in all shapes and sizes from a variety of popular hardware vendors. Skype and Mozilla Firefox are both popular portable applications which, when bundled onto a flash drive, give a computer user the chance to turn any machine they’re using into a productive powerhouse. Portable apps are easy to backup, easy to customise and easy to replicate – meaning your business’ IT staff would be able to equip every one of your colleagues with powerful, portable ways of always staying securely connected. It doesn’t just stop there, either. Popular graphics manipulation programs, FTP clients and office suites are all available in portable form.

Take Your Business To The Next Level

Just imagine how useful your business could prove to be to somebody if you used promotional USB sticks loaded with portable apps to clients. Portable apps are a fantastic way to keep yourself productive in a pinch, and can be suited to virtually every environment.


If you want to have a software that’s fit for your business’ needs, there are plenty of efficient developers you can hire. For example, you can check out one of those software development companies London businesses rely on. They can provide you with software solutions, no matter the size of your business.