Recently I had the misfortune(?) of having my laptop reach the end of its life. To make really sure that it was at the end of the road, I had to leave it at the repair shop for about 2 months so that the guy could at leisure try everything possible to set it right. Meanwhile I went through a phase of de-addiction from being always connected to my laptop. I had to stay in touch with email though, also get on with research for my website, read my ever growing collection of e-books etc… Later on even when I got a substitute laptop, it was bulky and underpowered so it stays on my desk when I go home unless I feel I’ll need my own dedicated data processor when travelling. (Most of the time I don’t) It is connected through a KVM switch to a full sized Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor (along with 2 servers, and a bare bones test machine). In spite of the fact that it is sluggish, thanks to the neat little arrangement, I now have the ergonomics of a desktop while using a laptop. In addition it improved my posture and got rid of my lower back pain!
I took stock of the situation and summed up my position. My needs were to make my work portable. At the same time I also needed it to sync/work with my Linux desktop back home and also on the Windows computers at my workplace and when I travel. The simplest option was to have a pen drive and carry my data around. The hitch here was that there were different software installed on different computers. Sometimes these software were bootlegged and some of them would not enable me to continue to work on the data back home due to cross platform incompatibilities.
I toyed with the idea of using Google Docs, however Google’s aim of keeping my data on their server/using their applications did not appeal to me. Regardless of the confidentiality of my data, I just couldn’t find a good reason to store my data on Google or on any other 3rd party host. The added concern was that in most of the remote places I would visit, I would have intermittent, slow, unreliable or no Internet connection which would cause me to be stranded. I was also very sure that I needed my data to be accessible offline!
I opted for the Transcend 250Gb Store jet as the medium for my data in spite of warranty being an issue with Transcend in India. Probably the fact that the box boasted compliance with US Mil specifications and drop tests, I felt my data was safer. I was not quite sure how long a pen drive would work with the almost non stop read/write cycles and the marginally slower speed -which would be annoying. Next I turned my focus to Open Source applications the reasons being that it was free and it worked on Linux as well as Windows and most likely would also work on the Mac. (Unfortunately I never got to test it out as Macbook owners are too possessive of their white Pizza boxes) I have purchased software previously and don’t mind paying for software, but paying regularly for a forced upgrade that I do not need is a bad investment for me.
Since my primary operating system at work would be Windows, I re-tested an application I had previously tried called Portableapps. I mixed and matched the applications that I needed and also added some other standalone tools (for my profession). I just needed to create a new folder in the portableapps folder on the USB drive and the executable files would get added to the menu launcher on the next refresh. Suppose a folder had more than one executable, I could rename the unneeded menu item by right clicking on the item on the portable apps menu and change its name to a “-” and it would vanish from the menu. The only criteria was that the program should not require writing to the Windows registry (although some which did still worked well)
The software works quite reliably. I had some problems with Firefox as themes/addons seem to get deactivated when run from a different computer. Firefox also seems to get confused when run via portableapps on a computer that already has Firefox installed on it. I was able to Wine Portableapps on Ubuntu, the only confusion being Ubuntu’s Application bar/task bar is on the top of the screen, so while the portable apps launcher is visible on the top right hand side, when clicked the portableapps menu pops up from the bottom right of the screen -not an inconvenience though it feels a bit eerie at first and takes some getting used to. I was however not able to Wine GNUCash as all the fonts blew up -all I could see on the screen was the first menu item… “File” about 15″ in size! so I installed the native GNUCash for Linux from the appropriate repositories. I did this for any other apps that did not Wine properly. The shared data worked well.
You can find a complete list of updated applications here. Right now Portableapps does not have an autoupdate feature, but in the next version it is expected to have auto update in addition to an autostart feature, where you can put your favourite apps into startup instead of manually starting each application by clicking on the menubar. For e.g. I’d like Thunderbird to start up along with pnotes, GNUCash, Firefox, Flashget and uTorrent as I usually run these applications concurrently on Portableapps startup.
A few of my customized portableapps applications…
There are too many to list including video editors, Internet Browsers, Games, Download managers, CD/DVD authoring tools/writers, Full featured Office suite, Planetarium simulators, Backup utilities, Pdf viewer/editor, NSIS Installer creator, chat clients, compression/decompression tools, post-it notes, secure file erasers etc… You can even run a complete website using Apache & MySQL using XAMPP.
Some precautions to be taken:
I don’t have a serious virus problem as I work on secure systems that I personally manage and quite a few of them are running Linux. For my backup, I use rsync to synchronize my USB drive with my Ubuntu home desktop -which incidentally is running RAID1, so my data is doubly safe. In the future, I will also have it making daily tarred backups (one for each day of the current week, then one (past) week of the current month, one (past) month of the current year and 1 backup from each year for the past 7 years. In addition my USB hard disk also rsyncs with my office server which is again on RAID1. I will cover rsync and backups in detail in a future post. (Currently I am working on a comprehensive backup system for my office roaming users and field units) I enabled Master Passwords for Firefox & Thunderbird for security, but am unsure of going any further as encrypting my disk would be messy if it failed to decrypt or got screwed up as the result of being used by multiple operating systems.
After Portableapps, I’ve lost interest in carrying my laptop as my work has not been affected by its absence. I have started taking notes with pen and paper again as paper doesn’t beep annoyingly like my laptop does when its battery is low. I digitize the information when I am back at my desk or at home. I use my USB hardisk and my portable apps and local data and piggyback on any available host computer’s Internet connection, printing abilities and other resources. Ideally I’d have liked to boot my own Operating System environment from my USB drive, unfortunately experiments with Ubuntu did not yield consistent results -probably the same Windows HAL limitations. In addition it also meant asking for wireless keys, Internet passwords etc… With Portableapps I can just borrow someones computer and piggyback like a parasite and hook on to all the resources available to that system leaving the authentication and configuration to the host computer. Often I need just 5 minutes to download mail from my 4 different email accounts. then I can move to another system and work offline at leisure and send the mail later again in 5 minutes or less! It is nice for a change to travel light! I can carry more of my photography equipment now 
The best part is since I’m offline from home, I find a lot of time for the more meaningful and enjoyable things of life. I realized this a long time back when I stopped taking IT related calls at home. There is a lot more peace and less stress on being disconnected. My phone and PC are my slaves once more! Everything else can wait! The best part is -it allows me to work better because the next day I am as fresh as I can be and my thought processes/analytical skills are razor sharp.
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