More often than not, I am obliged to use a customer’s client setup. Usually, because of network access in the customer’s work environments (VPN, or alike).
In such cases, I noticed the inherent lack of proper tools to work. Either you do not get what you need or it takes ages or the tools comes in an incomplete, outdated, castrated fashion.
There is a way to make yourself independant of such environmental limitations: PortableApps.
A word of warning: very sensitive environments do not like you to use such portable software-stacks. Make sure you do not “trip into a trap” when using such tools.
Portable applications
A portable application in the sense I describe here is a Windows-Application that can be carried around on a USB-Stick or kept in a Dropbox, e.g.. It will be independant of the registry and does not required any local setup.
Some applications need to be patched drastically to comply to this requirement.
Extending PortableApps to your needs
PortableApps is probably the most prominent stack of free and portable software. Yet, some things, mainly half-commerial stuff is not in their repository. Assumed this software is portable, it can easily be integrated to the PortableApps stack.
Example applications in the stack
- Kitty (being the better putty-ssh-client)
- Putty
- Keepass
- WinSCP
- Google Chrome
- Firefox
- 7zip
- …
Applications integratable
Many applications have portable versions but no installer for the PortableApps stack. Those can be integrated seamlessly, e.g.:
- MobaXterm
- XMind
- Caffeine
- Atom.io