Best Portable Apps
On this page, you will find the best 50+ portable apps to bring with you on the go.We’ve taken the effort to categorize the extensions and picked only those we believe to be the best ones and which will most likely be useful to you.

Go Portable For A Better Windows Experience | Lifehacker Australia

Windows is great. The way Windows installs applications, however, is an out-of-date mess, adding local dependencies and unnecessary cruft to your system. In this day and age, there’s no reason to stick with Windows’ antediluvian default. What’s the alternative? Using portable apps, you can install an app once, have all of the necessary files in one place, and even sync its settings across different machines with Dropbox. Handy, right? Here’s how it works, and why you should do it.

What Exactly Are Portable Apps?

Often, when you go to download a new program, you have a choice between two versions: an installer, or a portable version. The installer (often an EXE or MSI file) will add the program to your system, usually under C:\Program Files, then spread a few other system files out across your hard drive, including configuration files, DLL files and registry edits (for more on what those mean, check out our de-mystificaion of Windows’ dark corners). Portable apps, on the other hand, usually come as an EXE or a ZIP file, and are completely self-contained. When you install them, you pick one folder, in which you’ll find that program and all of the files necessary to run it. It doesn’t put files anywhere else on your system.

You can often find portable apps on the same download page as their installer counterparts, though sometimes you may have to look through a portable apps database like the Portable Freeware collection to find them. Some great examples of popular apps available as portables include:

Firefox and Chrome
VLC Media Player
Pidgin Instant Messenger
Thunderbird Email Client
Foobar2000 music player
SumatraPDF
And lots, lots more

The idea is that you can run these portable apps from a flash drive, thus taking your favourite browser or password program with you without having to install it on a computer that isn’t yours. It’s a great little invention for those of us on the go… but it has a lot of other uses, too.
Why You Should Use Portable Apps All the Time

Even though they’re called “portable” apps, their self-contained nature has a lot of advantages on any computer, even your home machine. Here are a few reasons you may want to ditch installations and go portable with as many apps as you can.

-- checkout the link for more, the article is a bit big and all the links are not getting transferred here properly, so I am not posting the complete article here.

What is a portable app? | PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB, portable and cloud drives

Portable App Definition
A portable app is a computer program that you can carry around with you on a portable device and use on any Windows computer. When your USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod or other portable device is plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. And when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind.

Consider the Possibilities...

Your favorite web browser with all your bookmarks close at hand
Your presentation AND the required software ready to go for that big meeting
Your important passwords and account information securely encrypted and always with you
Your antivirus program and other utilities ready to fix PC problems
Your calendar with all your appointments
Your own email client with all your contacts and settings
Your instant messenger and your buddy list
Your whole office suite along with all your documents

Why PortableApps.com Format and a PortableApps.com Installer?

Simple Portable Installer Wizard - The installer uses an easy-to-use, familiar wizard to handle the actual installation, guiding the user through the process. But unlike a standard software installer, it doesn't overwhelm the user with choices, nor does it install to or make changes to the local PC.
Faster Downloads - PortableApps.com Installers use advanced compression techniques resulting in a 20-30% savings or more in file size over standard zip files; which makes for faster downloads, and lower bandwidth costs for users that pay by the MB.
Better Upgrading - The PA.c Installer automatically handles upgrading application files while leaving the user's data intact. It can even move files around and update configuration settings when necessary. Many users can run into issues with upgrades of apps packaged in zip files, especially complicated apps that require manually removing certain files. With PortableApps.com Installers, upgrades are much easier.
Easier Backups - All PortableApps.com apps have their data in the same location, AppNamePortable\Data. This lets tools like our integrated backup utility provide users with easy access to backup just their personal information quickly without needing to backup all their applications each time. As a result, users are more likely to backup more often.
Easy Platform Installs - The installer automatically detects an existing PortableApps.com Platform installation on any drive connected to the PC and install to it, which makes life much easier on less-experienced users.
Tamper Prevention and Digital Signatures - All of our installers and launchers have built-in technology to detect if they have been altered or tampered with in any way and will warn you if they have been. Additionally, most installers and launchers are digitally signed using a secure code-signing certificate to ensure integrity.
Licensing - Many apps require EULAs to be shown during installation. The PA.c Installer handles this automatically. This is especially true of some freeware and upcoming commercial releases. Some applications simply can't be legally redistributed in ZIP files.
Self Contained - The installer doesn't require any outside files or utilities like unzip software. Different PCs may have different unzip utilities installed. Some PCs running Windows 2000 may not even have unzip utilities available. With the PA.c Installer, no additional software is required and the experience is consistent for the user.
Fully Portable - Unlike most zipped 'portable' software, all PA.c releases handle things like drive letter changes with ease ensuring that the entire app, not just parts of it, continue to work as you move PCs. Without the included PA.c launcher in each app, many semi-portable apps would have things like most recently opened files and settings break as you move PCs.
"No Code" Portablization - The PortableApps.com Launcher and Installer require no coding or manual compilation to use. You just need to follow the prescribed PA.c Format specification and fill out some simple text files and most software can be portablized without requiring any coding changes to the base application.
Open, Standardized Format - PortableApps.com Format is the most widely used format for portable software. It's open source, under an open license and open to all!

LiberKey - Portable Applications

292 applications available in a few clicks!
In all areas : Audio, Video, Graphics, Internet, Games, Security, Education, System, etc.
Free
Ready to use
Portable applications
Automatic online updates
Synchronization with the online catalog

geek.menu features
You may be asking yourself, "Why would I bother with geek.menu? Shouldn't I stick with the PortableApps.com menu?" Well, there are many things that set geek.menu apart from the other options out there. The most significant difference is the current pace of development. While the PortableApps.com menu is maintained by the same guy maintaining almost every package for the menu, I'm focusing on making the best possible menu. I wrote geek.menu after getting frustrated waiting for some pretty important features, like categorization and encryption. Since then, geek.menu has been improving regularly thanks to suggestions from everyone in the PortableApps community.

Here's an attempt at a comprehensive list of features that set geek.menu apart.
Included in the stable release

Security Features
support for running applications and saving documents to a TrueCrypt encrypted volume to protect your privacy if your USB key is lost or stolen.
supports for alternate profiles for trusted and untrusted PCs.

Hi,

As far as I know, and in relation with trading, Sierra Chart is a portable application.
In the meaning that you can copy/paste its directory to another computer and have it work, without any installation.
(I have not tested myself.)

Nicolas

With modern connection capabilities, all of these issues are going to be obsolete.

With Windows XP or later, you can remote desktop to your home/server from any device with a connection (running xp or later).

Additionally, I recently purchased a remote desktop application for my android os phone (xtralogic) and it works great.

TS offers an app, but it's terribly limited and really only more for checking than doing anything else.

With remote desktop, I literally have control of my server (or home PC) anywhere I have a 3G or better connection.

The plural of software is software