Maintain your Windows PC; Part 3: Adding Applications to the USB Flashdrive

All right, now you have a bootable USB pendrive as well as some of the best data recovery & drive partitioning utilities on your pendrive. How about adding some of the best applications for your day-to-day usage, like browsers, office apps, e-mail, etc. Let's get on with it then.

Just launch your favorite browser and go to PortableApps.com which provides a truly open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). It's open source built around an open format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use. It's convenient. Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind. The PortableApps.com Suite and Platform is free. It contains no spyware. There are no advertisements. It isn't a limited or trial version. There is no additional hardware or software to buy. You don't even have to give out your email address. It's 100% free to use, free to copy and free to share. Hey! it's also available in lots of languages.

What is a Portable app? Here are some answers to your questions directly from their website. There are a lot of applications for you on PortableApps.com. In fact, they have divided the download into 3 types. You can download the package of your choice depending on the amount of space you want to allocate on your pen drive or you can just download the "Main Platform" for portable applications and then customise to your whims and fancies. Given below are the options from their website:
Platform Only: which is basically the "Launcher" for Portable applications. It looks and works like the the Windows Start Menu.
Light Suite: This one is a 35MB download and takes up approx. 100MB of space after installation. This, according to them, is meant for pendrives with 256MB+ free space.
Standard Suite: This is a 113MB download and will eat up around 350MB. If you have a pen drive with 512MB+ capacity, this is a must have. It contains OpenOffice.org suite of office applications which are compatible with Microsoft Office and have almost all the features of Microsoft Office.

Hmmm, I have a feeling you want to customise this. oh! well. Let's start. If you want to, you can also download and install the Light Suite or the Standard Suite and then customise it according to your liking.

1) Download the Portable Apps "Platform". Click on the Download link under Platform Only. Please do not Right Click and try to download. It does not work.
2) Once the download is complete, I recommend that you install this directly to your pendrive. Insert the pendrive into a free USB port, launch the installer & follow the instructions. You will be asked to select the destination. Just hit Browse and select your pendrive from the list the pops up.
3) After the install completes, you will have an option to Launch the PortableApps Menu. Click Finish to see the Menu. You can also access this Menu by clicking on the Taskbar Icon which just got added to your taskbar. You should also know that this Menu will be launched automatically when you insert this pendrive into any USB Port. Absolutely brilliant.
4) I'll give you an example of adding one of the applications. Then you can add how many ever you want using the same steps that we follow here. Please note that there may be some changes depending on the application. Just read the notes section for that application for instructions.
5) Click on this Applications Link and under the Internet section, click on Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition. Please read the entire page regarding features and other important notes and then click on the download link to download the file.
6) Please close the PortableApps Menu now. When the download is done, double-click the file and follow the instructions to install it. Please install it to the same pendrive where you installed the Menu earlier. These files are known as "Portable Application Format" files or PAF, in short. After the installation is over, launch the PortableApps Menu by browsing to your pendrive and double-clicking on StartPortableApps. You should now see Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition listed in the menu.
7) Phew! That's it for now. You can go ahead, download and install the applications of your choice.