Going data-portable without the Portable PC (updated)

Last week I got yelled and scolded by my little sister complaining about me forcing her into using OpenOffice.org for her assignments. So while she searched and scoured the net for all her copy-paste work, I was yapping at her about paraphrasing and translating her articles herself instead of searching some content in the Tagalog Wikipedia and just dragging those texts to OpenOffice. She asked me why we were using OpenOffice in the first place and the jerk in me told her that if she has money to buy us MS Office and MS Windows, I'd be glad to install it in my own computer. The FOSS advocate in me, on the other hand, told me I should make my brothers and sisters use FOSS and make a case study out of them (which is being chronicled in my FOSS articles here, mwah-hah-hah).

Anyway, back to the story. I had her save the file in OpenOffice's ODT format and I told her she should just save the file into my USB stick and head to the nearest computer shop to print it (I'd be buying a new printer hopefully soon). The next day, I got the scoldings and the yellings.

“No OpenOffice!”

After waiting for a few seconds to let the ringing in my ears go out, I apologized to her and told her how to save the file in MS Word's DOC format. And then I stopped. I wanted to insist on not using the DOC format (for personal reasons), and since I'm being a purist a**, I asked her to save it in PDF instead. I was already expecting her to come back because I know not all computer shops have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed in their PCs. Unfortunately, I was right.

So what should be the solution then? Should I just give up and save that file to DOC?

Yeah I know, the world has bigger problems...

Enter PortableApps

PortableApps is a clever tool to keep your personal data in one place while having this ability to use those data across different, probably borrowed, computers. I remember when this was introduced to us by a speaker last November at the Asia Source 3 conference-ish – it didn't feel like a conference... more like a bonfire meeting of friends from different countries. A lot of the participants of AS3 asked if ever they wanted to use FOSS but their companies won't allow them to install applications in their computers, probably due to IT protocol, they want to know how to get around this. The speaker told us there is PortableApps, where a bunch of frequently-used open source applications in MS Windows are gathered to be rebundled as a USB package. Not only that you don't have to install these awesome FOSS and freeware tools, you'd also get to keep your private data, since all of these portable applications store application settings inside the USB stick itself.

The way you use PortableApps is simple: You just download your choice of PortableApps suite, whether Platform, Lite, or Standard, double-click the downloaded file, and install inside your USB drive. Dead. Simple. After installing PortableApps, you can now roam the entire metro bringing with you your data plus your fave FOSS and freeware applications.

Sister's Axe

So before she throws an axe or a porcupine to me for making her wait a long time to download the PortableApps suite, I immediately borrowed my aunt's MS Windows netbook and installed PortableApps into the USB stick. I can't do it in my own desktop because it only has Linux in it, while my laptop is dual-booting Mac and Linux. After installing it, I then placed the ODT file into the USB stick's root directory and tested PortableApps's OpenOffice Portable Edition. It did open the file even though my aunt didn't have OpenOffice installed in her netbook. I then told my sister to bring the USB stick to the computer shop and launch PortableApps to open the ODT file using OpenOffice. Finally, she came back with her printout, and me keeping that grin up to this point while I'm writing this article.

Epilogue

I asked my sister if she made the computer shop attendant confused about using PortableApps, or making her scared of having viruses from PortableApps... she told me the computer shop attendant didn't care. She just wanted to get over with the printing debacle and let my sister move the mouse to the right buttons and programs.

Also, remember my article about Free Software for Little Kids? My brother asked me last week he wanted to join the MTAP training and gun for school representation this school year. Of course, that means I will be paying for his training, but I don't mind. Who would want turn down such a request? He also told me, with pride, he now knows how to do arithmetic with negative integers. He told me he learned all of that from TuxMath and some help from my yeller 'lil sister. I felt like I'm the best brother at that moment....

And then we resumed to our regular bed wrestling.

Update: I actually used PortableApps's Windows installer using Wine on my Ubuntu Desktop and installed it in my iPod Shuffle. I ran the PortableApps menu launcher installed in the iPod drive and I was surprised it worked! So there you have it, Windows or no Windows (by no Windows, I mean Linux... haven't tried this experiment on the Mac platform using Darwine), you can still install or make use of PortableApps.

PortableApps Menu screenshot courtesy of PortableApps.com, used under fair use.

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