What to do with your USB flash drive: Run portable apps

What's more portable than a laptop, tablet, or smartphone? Answer: A USB flash drive. If you want easy access to applications like Firefox, Chrome, OpenOffice, and more, all you need is your USB flash drive and a host computer.
In part five of our "What to do with your USB flash drive" series, we'll show you how to install portable apps onto your USB flash drive.
Step 1: Download the PortableApps 2.0 PR1.1 platform from PortableApps.com.
Step 2: Insert a USB flash drive into your computer and double-click on the downloaded file, PortableApps.com_Platform_Setup_2.0_Pre-Release_1.1.exe, to start the installation.
Step 3: At the "destination folder" section of the install, enter the drive letter of your USB flash drive, then click the Install button.
Choose location
Photo by Screenshot by Ed Rhee
Step 4: Click the Finish button to end the installation and launch the PortableApps.com Platform.
Finish install
Photo by Screenshot by Ed Rhee
Step 5: When the PortableApps menu appears, select Manage Apps, then Get More Apps.
Get more apps
Photo by Screenshot by Ed Rhee
Step 6: Select the apps you want to install on your USB flash drive then click the Next button.
Apps list
Photo by Screenshot by Ed Rhee
Step 7: Once all your apps are installed, you'll see a list of them in the PortableApps menu.
PortableApps full menu
Photo by Screenshot by Ed Rhee
That's it. The next time you insert your PortableApps USB flash drive into a computer, the apps menu will automatically pop up. If it doesn't, you can just browse to the USB flash drive and double-click on Start.exe.
You can browse the Internet with Firefox or Chrome, scan the computer for viruses with ClamWin, work on documents with OpenOffice, and a whole lot more. The best part is, everything is stored on the USB flash drive so no trace is left behind on the host computer

Comments