The beginner’s guide for portable applications - part 2

This second and final part of our quick tour through the world of portable applications will focus mostly on programs that are not necessarily needed by the common user, but may come in handy in certain situations or to the more experienced Windows fans.

Compressing and decompressing files may be a very easy task, but things change when you have to use another computer that doesn’t have a compression utility installed, so here are some of our suggestions. You can try using the trial version of popular archivers WinRAR and PowerArchiver, or consider giving 7-zip, IZArc2Go and PeaZip a go, which are free for both personal and commercial use.

An organizer is not very helpful if you need to access your agenda from more than one computer. To overcome this inconvenience, feel free to install any of the following portable organizers and personal information managers: Sunbird, EverNote, EssentialPIM Pro, Avignon Concept or MSD Organizer.

Securing your data may be done in several ways: by encrypting your important files and folders, by safely managing your passwords and other sensitive data and by removing your traces and any redundant data from the host computer. Let’s take a closer look at each method and see what are your portable alternatives.

If you’re interested in encrypting data without spending a single cent, you should know that there are quite a few freeware portable programs that will help you achieve this without a lot of hassle, and here are just some of the options: Portable TrueCrypt, Challenger, Androsa FileProtector or Blowfish Advanced CS. If these programs don’t satisfy your needs, then you might consider shedding a few bucks on much more advanced encryption applications like Portable Vault, CryptoLock or MyPrivacyKey.

Passwords (or passphrases) generally pose two very important problems: you must always store them in a safe place, where nobody can discover them and, furthermore, if we’re talking about more than two or three, it’s almost impossible to memorize all of them. This is where password managers enter the scene like the lifesavers they sometimes are. Here are just a few suggestions of portable applications that will enable you to easily carry your passwords with you wherever you go: KeePass, SignupShield, SimplePasswords, and Password Safe, which are all freeware programs; or Roboform2Go, WebM8 and Handy Password, which will require a small investment on your behalf in order to use them without any kind of restrictions.

To easily and safely remove sensitive or redundant data, there are quite a few powerful utilities that will enable you to wisely save some space on your drives, and the best part is that they’re free! So don’t hesitate to put some of these babies to work, while you sit back as files are being shred: CCleaner, Eraser Portable, ZKleener or MV RegClean.

Creating a backup copy of your flash drive or important files and folders ensures protection against any type of data loss. So, let’s see what portable software should always be on your USB stick to prevent unrecoverable removal of your files: Cobian, Toucan, Allway Sync ‘n’ Go, Backup4all and Package Backup For U3. Still, if you’ve erased something, restoring deleted data is not at all impossible, so just immediately run a recovery tool such as: Recuva, Avira UnErase Personal or FileExtractor.

And now, at the end of our journey, after such a long walk through the world of portable applications, let’s take a final look at your options when it comes to managing your files. An easy way to have all of your portable applications and rapidly run them is that of using a portable launcher, so here are your options: PStart, Portable Start Menu, Open Menu+ or Executor. However, if you’re looking for a lot more than that, here a few very popular file managers which will most probably help you get your job done in a jiffy: EF Commander, Total Commander, XYplorer, UltraExplorer. That’s all, folks! Enjoy your portable applications!