Basically you can keep all your software (and data) on a USB stick and this is all you need to bring along you complete computing environment! This is the origin of the name “portable” itself. A portable software can easily be moved between different computers by just copying the program folder, since no installation is required and all settings are contained within this folder.The application does not save or change anything on the host computer outside its program folder.Thus if the program folder is moved, settings come along too. All application settings are saved inside the program folder.Net, Java and Visual Basic runtimes, that are usually already installed and in a sense can be seen as part of the runtime environment that everyone already have. The exception to this are common runtime files, such as. No files need to be installed on the host computer first. This program folder contains everything needed to run the application.The program is delivered in a zip archive that you only need to extract into a folder of your choice (the “program folder” below) to “install” the program. There is no exact specification of what a portable application is, but the following list contain the properties that are usually assumed when talking about portable software:

But what is a portable application? In this simple guide I will try to examine what a portable application is, show advantages and disadvantages, and point you towards how to find them. Portable Windows applications have gained much popularity lately (which is kind of ironic, since originally all programs where pretty much portable).

Make application portable