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Make Your Flash Drive A Portable Office

March 3, 2010 By

If you spend a lot of time on your computer, and you don’t have a lot of money, here’s a great way to get useful, quality software, absolutely free: PortableApps.

Poratble Apps are free, portable versions of programs you might be using already. If you are on the road, at school, or on anyone’s computer but your own, you can take your programs with you: they live on your USB flash drive—or any other portable media, like a portable hard drive, Ipod, etc.

Portable Apps are freeware and open source programs …which means they really are free. They are fully-functional programs licensed as open source or freeware, not limited trial versions of commercial software. You can use them as much as you want, and even give away to your friends.

Portable Apps are great for students, people who share a computer, workers who can’t customize their office computers, and people who use multiple computers on a regular basis.

You can use your portable applications on any Windows computer. This means you can maintain your own bookmarks, preferences and settings—even your own personal e-mail. When you leave, just take your portable media with you …you won’t leave any personal data behind.

What is a Portable App? According to the official PortableApps Website, a portable app…

Works from any device (USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod, etc)
Works as you move computers and your drive letter changes
Continues working as you move to other computers
Doesn’t leave files or folders behind on the PC
Doesn’t leave registry entries behind except those automatically generated by Windows
Is optimized for use on removable drives
Doesn’t require additional software on the PC
Doesn’t interfere with software installed on the PC

portableapps_on_vistaHow do you use Portable Apps? The best way to install your Portable Apps use to begin with the PortableApps.com Menu. The menu loads as an icon in your system tray, making it easy to launch any application you need with a single click.

What Kind of Portable Apps Are available? There are more than 50 different Portable Apps, including some well-known programs that you may already use:

  • Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition: Now you can have your favorite extensions and bookmarks on any computer you use
  • Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition: Check your email anywhere and keep it with you with this popular email client
  • Google Chrome Portable: A take-anywhere version of the browser with incognito mode
  • Skype Portable: Freeware video chat and phone calls
  • Songbird Portable: Full-featured digital media library and player
  • FileZilla Portable: The popular open-source FTP client (one of my favorites)
  • ClamWin Portable: Free Antivirus on the go
  • 7-Zip Portable: Fast file compression/decompression
  • Eraser Portable: Securely delete files and wipe unused disk space
  • Lightscreen Portable: easy to use screenshot tool
  • GIMP Portable: The open source image editor that competes with Photoshop

These are just a few of the more popular Portable Apps. If you don’t have Microsoft Office on the computer you use at work or school, you can carry a portable version of OpenOffice wherever you go.

Portable Apps do not interfere with the data you have on your flash drive; so, your ability to transport pictures, music files, and documents along with your applications is limited only by this capacity of your flash drive.

Start customizing your flash drive with portable apps at portableapps.com

If you have used Portable Apps please leave a comment below and share your tips and suggestions.

Filed Under: Free, Savings Tagged With: everyone, Free, portable, utilities

Protect Yourself From Malware With Avast! Free Antivirus 5.0

February 27, 2010 By

avast! Free Antivirus 5.0To keep your computer functioning reliably, up-to-date antivirus protection is a must. Luckily, a professional–caliber solution does not have to cost a lot of money. A great solution is avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 from ALWIL Software, now in Version 5.0.

There are a number of good antivirus products available for download. Some of them are not truly free—they function for limited trial period, and then you must purchase the product in order to maintain your computer’s protection. Other free products may lack features found in commercial antivirus software. With avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 you don’t need to give up crucial features like transparent background scanning, automatic updates, and anti-spyware protection …and avast! really is free for non-business home users.

Previous versions of avast! made it the world’s most popular free antivirus program, with over 100 million users. Now avast! 5.0 has new features, a new interface, and performs impressively in virus and spyware elimination tests.

As before, the new 5.0 edition of avast! is free for non-business home users; the “Pro” version is available for business use and has additional features and customization options.

New avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 includes…

  • Transparent scanning of all files, programs and email
  • Automatic updates
  • Improved antivirus and anti-spyware engine
  • Scanning on-demand
  • Scheduled scanning
  • Impressive anti-spyware and anti-root-kit protection
  • Online tech support

Once you install avast! Free Antivirus, you will need to register within 30 days in order to receive automatic updates and use the product free for one year. Here’s how…

Open the avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 interface and click on the ‘MAINTENANCE’ tab. Next click on ‘Registration’ and then on ‘Register now’. A new window with registration form will open. Into the form fields fill the required data and then click on ‘Register for free license’.

avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 can be used for 12 months and you will continue to receive automatic updates to both the program and your virus definitions. At the end of that time, it will be necessary simply to register for a new free license.

You can download avast! Free Antivirus 5.0 from http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download

Filed Under: Free, Savings Tagged With: antivirus, everyone, Free, security

Students Save on Popular Software

January 18, 2010 By

Save cash!When shopping for software, students get the best deals by taking advantage of academic pricing on the most popular software titles. Companies like Adobe and Microsoft have special pricing for students.

To be eligible  for academic discounts, students must provide proof of their enrollment status, sometimes by having a college email account ending with .EDU, or by sending a copy of a student ID, class schedule or other document.

When shopping online, be sure to deal with reputable vendors.  One of the most popular student-discount sources is JourneyEd.com. In fact, JourneyEd has deals for non-students as well, including discounts for teachers and the general public. Unlike many online academic retailers, JourneyEd has a telephone line, so customers can speak to a live person if there is any question about their order.

Photo credit: borman818

Filed Under: Savings Tagged With: everyone, faculty, students
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