anyone using strictly thin apps / portables instead of always doing traditional installs to their machines? and if so, what are the benefits aside from space saving? i've just recently, (and by recent i mean today lol) started fooling with these and i'm liking it already. don't know why i've waited so long, but running thin apps seems to be fairly economical in my opinion... whose got a lot of experience running and producing thin apps / portables??? also, what are some good free apps to use to produce thin apps?? (not vmware thin app as it is not free, but is free to try, i'm talking full versions for free) thanks for your input in advance
Have you looked at PortableApps.com? It probably is not what you are looking for since they must run on their own platform.
let me try: 1. registry database with install you mess around with windows registry (install path, options, keys and other stuff ...) portable program have basic registry entry or do not use registry (have his own .ini file) 2. registration sometimes software with install maybe need registration key or any kind of activation to work portable don't need that or key is portable too.
i'd like to make vmware player portable somehow. that's my goal since it's a better virtual machine that all it's components work for me, though it has services that it needs, but these are just simple .exe files that can be run at any time i would think. we shall see...
Guess that would be hard to accomplish, VMPlayer requires specific drivers, services etc for it to function correctly
the services are just exe files so that is no problem like i mentioned above. the can be started and terminated at will within my XP i know. as for drivers, there aren't many, and it was done with virtual box, so i'm not seeing why there should be any problem at all. though reading online i've seen where others say that it would be hard to impossible, but i don't think anyone has ever really tried to do it either.
Most of the time if you install a program then copy its files to another folder then uninstall it you thus you have made it portable. Then if you want one exe file just use a sfx with winrar and set it to extract all files to a temp folder on run and delete files on close. Then it is Portable. Hope this helps.
well i've got a VMware Player exe that runs completely self contained where one can create and configure a VM, but when it comes to playing it is where the problems begin. it appears that to make it completely portable it's going to take some script work to run all the needed services (which i have found have quite a few dll dependencies), install on use and remove on exit drivers, and still some data folders bundled with the exe, so it will not be completely contained in one exe file, but maybe in just a couple folders is possible after all. i'll start a new thread for it, if i ever get this thing working mint.
Not VMWare Player, but I did made Virtual PC 2007 SP1 portable a few years back. The launcher will add necessary registry keys & values, install the network driver, launch VPC, remove network driver and remove any created registry keys & values. Search Google if you'd like to try that