Portable Apps or Fully-Installed Apps?

[javierdlm001]

Does any one know if Portable Apps are the same as their counter-parts Fully-Installed Apps? Or if they are not as complete.
I am considering installing "only" portable apps in a separate partition, in an attempt to diminish the impact on fragmentation, namely on the OS partition.

Any advice/recommendations related to this will be more than appreciated.

Thanks in advance guys

DPC

 

[goombawaho]

Could you give us an example. If you were speaking of an app like Microsoft Office, I don't think there is such a thing as a portable version. So it depends on which apps you are thinking of unless I'm totally misunderstanding the question.

Regardless, I don't know that your idea has enough merit to make it worthwhile as fragmentation is not a huge issue in the era of windows 7/8 plus there are defragmentation tools.

 

[2ffat]

I use some portable apps. For example, NirSoft has some that I use. The best way to use portable apps is to put them onto something like a thumb drive so you can move them from PC to PC. For the most part, these are the same as the "full" apps but they a broken up into small parts. It really depends on who wrote the app and what they are used for as to whether they work the same or not.

I don't see them as useful for keeping things from getting fragmented or not. If the app needs a chunk of drive for temp files then it won't matter if the app is portable or not.





James P. Cottingham
I'm number 1,229!
I'm number 1,229!

 

[javierdlm001]

Thanks a bunch for your replies guys.

The first and best Defragmenter tool I ever used was from Norton Utilities for the Mac back in the day! (1993). Yes, hard to believe, but back then Norton used to have a very good reputation, at least among Mac users. Their Disk utility (part of a package) was able to do a very thorough defragmentation thanks to the fact that it would require you to run it from a separate disk from which you had booted from. This way it could defragment even system files that normally would be open. And once it was done, you could really feel the system way more responsive and faster.
A few years later I had to switch to the PC for work reasons. And noticed that the defragmenters I found they would all do their work while the pc was running, and running from the same system where the application was installed. Which made me very skeptical of their results. But also, I never felt like the system was any better after their work was done, which would further support my disbelief. And ever since I just never gave much credit to any defragmenters. So the one thing that I could feel that was doing something to improve responsiveness was formatting and reinstalling the whole shebang, once a year or so.
But I guess things changed while I was not paying attention. I am glad!
Is there any particular Defragmenter you would suggest, goombawaho?

As for the type of Apps I was talking about, they are mostly from the Open Source community, like Gimp, Scribus, Inkscape, Open Office, etc

Thanks guys,

JDL

 

[xwb]

I sometimes use the 16 bit version of MS Office 6 before it was ported to Office 95. Since it is very old technology, it doesn't use the registry, and, as such can be installed on to a memory stick and pretty much used anywhere. Ok, it is old, doesn't have fancy ribbons, but it works. As long as I can read and edit my docs, I'm not really bothered about how pretty the tool looks. It probably won't work on 64 bit but I haven't made that jump yet.

I also use Portable VLC a lot for playing videos. Very often, whatever is installed doesn't have the right drivers. Portable VLC is an absolutely amazing package: it will play almost anything and it is a godsend when it comes to machines with no admin privileges.

 

[spamjim]

I'm not understanding the belief that portable apps would have any effect on defragmentation. It does not really matter. While it is good to regularly tune up your drives, if this is causing a serious performance issue, consider SSD.

PortableApps.com has one or two defrag tools.

 

[javierdlm001]

Thank you for sharing guys.

I just thought of keeping the fragmentation to a minimum. And if keeping (hopefully) a large number of apps separated from the partition where the OS is found, then I'd do that. But it would also be more convenient in the event when I were to need to reinstall "only" the OS. Then in that case at least I wouldn't have to put the extra time reinstalling the apps too.
But anyway, I just installed Win8 last night, and fortunately I liked it. So far it has performed smoothly, it's quite responsive, I know I just installed it, so this is to be expected. But I want to give it the benefit of the doubt and trust that its automatic tools and refreshed utilities like its defragmenter are better than ever. I guess only time will tell.
Before I installed it I was afraid I would not be able to use it comfortably enough to make it my main OS, so I had already set my mind to arrange for a dual-boot with Win7 as my main OS, and Win8 just to satisfy my curiosity and maybe get to use a few cool (hopefully better) features. But unless I come across a compatibility issue, I don't think I'll be needing a dual-boot setup.

JDL