Getting More Out of Your Netbook By Using Portable Applications (Page 3 of 4)

For instant messaging applications you have three choices: aMSN, which only supports Microsoft’s MSN protocol, Pidgin and Miranda IM which support almost all protocols. However, Microsoft, thanks to its proprietary code, makes slight changes to its communication protocols resulting in connection failures by other instant messaging applications. If you are an MSN fan, or cannot tolerate interruptions, then you may consider installing the latest MSN Live Messenger from Microsoft’s site.

Moving along, we all have file archiving needs. One of the top applications, 7-zip, is available as a portable release. 7-zip can pack zip, 7z, tar, bzip2, gzip and can unpack rar, cab, iso, arj, lzh, chm, z, cpio, rpm, deb and nsis files. I do not think that any format is left behind (of course, for all practical purposes.)

Possibly you are using a download assistant on your main computer for pausing, resuming downloads and managing multiple downloads in a single window. For that, we have the portable application named WinWGet Portable. WGet is a powerful command-line utility for Linux and, for the Windows platform, you have it in a graphical user interface. There is also the DownThemAll! extension for Firefox, which you may consider using with your browser.

For FTP transfers, you can use the most-popular FileZilla Portable or the lightweight FireFTP extension for portable Firefox.

For managing torrents, you do not need to have a portable application. The popular μTorrent application will get you going. The application has a tiny footprint of 500 Kilobytes (approximately) and the installation does not create a burden on the system.

The most popular competitor of Photoshop, GIMP has its own portable version. GIMP is used by a wide variety of users, from novices (like me) to the more advanced. Be sure that for all practical purposes, GIMP will answer your needs. Like the other programs mentioned here, the portable version is not different from the installed version.

We conclude our article with Antivirus, iPod management, Web Site authoring applications. and our final thoughts.