[OT Rant] Re: Portable Apps..?
Bongu Jim, All stated that it would NOT be accepted in any corporate environment in Europe as corporations were banning the use of such devices by people in the office. No employees were allowed to use such a device in the office. What follows is a rant...please feel free to trash it without reading it (or respond to me privately?): Society, at least in America, is disintegrating because of the prevalent atmosphere of distrust. * I grew up in a society where people were presumed innocent until proven guilty; I live in a society where the government asks its citizens to presume there are enemy terriorists among the people around them. * I live in a society where armed, plain-clothes government agents ride planes, trains, busses with authority to shoot to kill if anyone utters the words, I have a bomb, or otherwise acts suspiciously. * I live in a society where a major international airport is shut down for hours because a luggage screener sees something that looked suspicious in a suitcase and instead of asking the owner to open the suitcase, reports it to authorities who--after talking to the owner--take the suitcase to the street and blast it with a water cannon. * I live in a society where a flashlight found in a public restroom is sent to an FBI lab to make sure it isn't actually a bomb, the flashlight's owner is being threatened with prosecution, and the authorities news agencies are still making a case that this was not the asanine screw up that it was. From your post (plus the subway killing in London and the public's acceptance of it) it appears this distrust is world-wide and permeating the private sector as well. I thank God that I am old enough to have lived most of my life in a freer society; but wonder what quality of life awaits my grandson, living in a world where he is distrusted by his government and his employer as well. Society is a joint undertaking; and civilization based on force, secrecy, and distrust condems its members to hell on earth. Rob Cozens No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. --James Madison, April 20, 1795 ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Jim, All stated that it would NOT be accepted in any corporate environment in Europe as corporations were banning the use of such devices by people in the office. No employees were allowed to use such a device in the office. I must say I'm surprised to hear this. From my limited experience, I would guess that many corporate and other business enterprises allow employees to take company laptops home or on the road with them, use their own computer for company business, or to take software and documents home on mass storage to work on their own computer after hours. If the organization allows one to take a company computer out of the office, what security is gained by prohibiting small mass storage devices in the office? I cannot imagine trying to run a business of any size without allowing some subset of employees access to company computers data off-site and after hours. If that is allowed, banning the use of small mass storage devices seems non sequitur to this foole. Rob Cozens CCW Serendipity Software Company And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three; Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee. from The Triple Foole by John Donne (1572-1631) ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
At 8:28 AM -0500 1/13/06, Thomas McGrath III wrote: Safe Portable App-ing Would using the 'Portable Apps' with a flash drive (whatever you wish to call them) be a non-runner with any corporate situation? I cannot imagine businesses being very enthusiastic about the possibility of employees being able to copy data and leaving the office with that data (credit card info, health info, guided missile blueprints, Ken Ray's 'secret shuffleboard techniques guidebook', ;-) ). Aren't flash drives banned from office environments? Wouldn't this be a consumer only thing? ciao, sims European Rev Conference 2006 www.techietours.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Sims, Originally, the thread started with the concept to let users have the option of installing their applications on a portable drive, not necessarily make it the default. Most apps allow users to save data anywhere they like, including usb drives, fileservers, webservers, local disks, etc. So I'm not sure Ken's 'secret shuffleboard techniques guidebook' may stay secret for long! -Chipp sims wrote: At 8:28 AM -0500 1/13/06, Thomas McGrath III wrote: Safe Portable App-ing Would using the 'Portable Apps' with a flash drive (whatever you wish to call them) be a non-runner with any corporate situation? I cannot imagine businesses being very enthusiastic about the possibility of employees being able to copy data and leaving the office with that data (credit card info, health info, guided missile blueprints, Ken Ray's 'secret shuffleboard techniques guidebook', ;-) ). ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
YES the newer solid drives are fast enough to real-time record 2 channels of 24/96 audio, if that can be used as a benchmark!. sqb Just guessing, but even if it's non-volatile RAM, I would expect it to be faster than a hard drive as typically RAM writes are significantly faster than hard disk writes (think of your virtual memory cache). -Chipp Richard Gaskin wrote: I could be mistaken, but I believe the difference is also a function of the type of RAM used in flash drives, since non-volatile RAM is slower than the type we use in computer memory. I.e., a USB flash drive should be expected to be slower than a USB hard drive. -- stephen barncard s a n f r a n c i s c o - - - - - - - - - - - - ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Bongu Jim, I cannot imagine businesses being very enthusiastic about the possibility of employees being able to copy data and leaving the office with that data (credit card info, health info, guided missile blueprints, Ken Ray's 'secret shuffleboard techniques guidebook', Removable media [Bernouli cartridges] made sense to me as IS manager of Omega Corp. in the mid 1980s, and it still makes sense to me in any business where the ratio of computers to computer users is less than one-to-one. Removable media makes it possible for users to share a computer but maintain total control of access to their individual documents, data files, etc. Yes today's computers support user sign-in and file access protection; but physically separating the computer from your personal files provides a higher level of security, me thinks. Rob Cozens, CCW Serendipity Software Company Vive R Revolution! ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Mark, et al: if you meant to say USB then you should consider switching to USB 2.0. Yes, I did; and yes the USB ports on my TPC are 2.0. I'm not sure of the rating of the Jump Drive and don't have the specs handy. I personally use the USB drive almost exclusive for transferring files between computers; so performance is not the issue. I will spend some time this AM measuring 100 MB standalone loading time from internal drive, Jump Drive, and CD. Rob Cozens CCW Serendipity Software Company And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three; Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee. from The Triple Foole by John Donne (1572-1631) ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Still - he faces a future where solid state drives might eventually render the HD useless...so he's biased... I was able to turn up an interview with Seagate CEO Bill Watkins which addresses this: If you want to have a very rich audio or video experience, no matter what you do, you're going to need a hard drive. Flash memory can't handle the data rates that a hard drive can. The data rates on flash are too slow to handle high-quality video and audio. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2005/tc20050927_1608_tc057.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech I still haven't found specifics on Flash drive speed relative to hard drives, but at least we have one authoritative voice to confirm what we see in our own experience: Flash drives are convenient, but not necessarily zippy. -- Richard Gaskin -- stephen barncard s a n f r a n c i s c o - - - - - - - - - - - - ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Stephen Barncard wrote: ..so he's biased... Who isn't? I think we've seen in this thread enough evidence that IF you're using USB 2.0 and IF you have one of the most recent Flash drives, the speed difference is negligible. And considering growth in this sector, I'd be surprised if relatively few drives which currently support comparable transfer rates didn't become the majority in under a year. -- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Richard, et al:
I think we've seen in this thread enough evidence that IF you're
using USB 2.0 and IF you have one of the most recent Flash drives,
the speed difference is negligible.
Here are my results, timed by stopwatch repeated twice, from the
second mouse click on the 91+ MB app to the first appearance on screen:
Platform-- TCP/Win XP USB 2.0 Apple Powerbook/Mac
OSX USB 1(?*)
Internal Drive--10 sec 8 sec
Jump Drive (USB)19 sec 1
min, 50 seconds
Firewire Ext. CD38 sec
Internal CD 1 min
* Apple system profiler rates the USB port at up to 12MB/sec, yet
actual performance is worse than the internal CD (.83 MB/sec).
To me the key then becomes what per centage of users don't have USB
2.0...unless you have a song dance ready to distract them for two
minutes. :{`)
Rob Cozens CCW
Serendipity Software Company
And I, which was two fooles, do so grow three;
Who are a little wise, the best fooles bee.
from The Triple Foole by John Donne (1572-1631)
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Re: Portable Apps..?
All:
To me the key then becomes what per centage of users don't have USB
2.0...unless you have a song dance ready to distract them for two
minutes. :{`)
OTOH, once a self-contained Rev standalone is loaded, it's entirely
in RAM; so the downside is only experienced during
initialization. Of course the bottleneck still applies if the
standalone opens other stacks during runtime.
Rob Cozens, CCW
Serendipity Software Company
Vive R Revolution!
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Re: Portable Apps..?
Hi Andre, I am late on the thread, Chipp is proposing to leave his computer at the office and take his software to client/demo sites on a USB drive and run it from same. He asked for others' thoughts, and I noted how long large applications took to load via USB on my Powerbook. Rob Cozens, CCW Serendipity Software Company Vive R Revolution! ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
At 8:28 AM -0800 1/14/06, Rob Cozens wrote: Removable media [Bernouli cartridges] made sense to me as IS manager of Omega Corp. in the mid 1980s, and it still makes sense to me in any business where the ratio of computers to computer users is less than one-to-one. Removable media makes it possible for users to share a computer but maintain total control of access to their individual documents, data files, etc. Yes today's computers support user sign-in and file access protection; but physically separating the computer from your personal files provides a higher level of security, me thinks. About three months ago I was thinking of selling an application designed for corporate employees, I was proposing to place this app onto a flash drive for ease of use and to make the users data more portable. I talked with a sales manager for scientific software, a distributor across Europe, I talked with a fellow who recently retired from his job a general manager (Europe) of a well known 'pen tablet' input device, I also talked to fellow who has been a software distributor to corporations for over ten years. All stated that it would NOT be accepted in any corporate environment in Europe as corporations were banning the use of such devices by people in the office. No employees were allowed to use such a device in the office. My question: is it common practise in the USA to allow employees to use flash drives in an office setting? ciao, sims European Rev Conference 2006 www.techietours.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Andre, Actually, that's not the real genesis of this thread. I'm thinking of converting my commercial apps to 'portable' apps, that way when people purchase them, they can have the option of putting them on a removable drive if they wish. There are a few other positive upsides to this as well. See the beginning of this thread I started. -Chipp Rob Cozens wrote: Hi Andre, I am late on the thread, Chipp is proposing to leave his computer at the office and take his software to client/demo sites on a USB drive and run it from same. He asked for others' thoughts, and I noted how long large applications took to load via USB on my Powerbook. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Rob- Saturday, January 14, 2006, 9:44:45 AM, you wrote: * Apple system profiler rates the USB port at up to 12MB/sec, yet actual performance is worse than the internal CD (.83 MB/sec). That's a USB 1.x port on the computer (sometimes referred to as full speed) as opposed to a USB 2.0 port (referred to as high speed). It doesn't matter whether you connect 1.x or 2.x devices to it, you can still only drive the computer's port at 1.x speed. And remember that the up to 12MB/sec spec is megaBITS, not bytes, so divide it roughly by ten to get throughput. ...and yes, that's a theoretical maximum speed, like defining modems as 56k. You'll never acheive that in practice. Even so, I'm surprised at the slowness of the mac's port - I would have expected twice that speed. I don't have any USB 1.x ports over here to run a comparable test on. -- -Mark Wieder [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Portable Apps..?
I have to say I find it amusing that this portable apps concept is being touted as the next big thing. In days of old, virtually all Mac system 7/8 apps were portable -- it didn't matter from which location they were run. Then came the push to follow the Windows lead of having assigned locations for files that led to the designated Application/Document/etc folders and users were expected to follow the conventions. Now the pendulum swings back the other way and portable apps are a new idea. Same thing happened with DOS in the early days. Most app's could be placed anywhere (we began coding IBM PC's with two floppy drives. One for the OS and one for the compiler and IDE). Then came languages like Clipper where you had to not only place it in the directory the developer indicated, but also modify config.sys and autoexec.bat in order to run the app's (Clipper was notorious for that). Windows 3.1x continued that tradition (of being anywhere on the drive - except moving it would break the installation of the program) until Win 9x. Win 9x forced directories to be in certain places. While you could install anywhere you could not move it once installed (at least not easily). MS declared that the registry was the place to write for configuration information - until Win 2K when they declared you should no longer write to the registry (as the registry became a huge bottleneck) but rather to the old Win 3.1x ini files. Microsoft are there own worst enemy. Scott ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Safe Portable App-ing An important thing to keep in mind when using portable applications is that they can be used to spread viruses between machines. While this isn't as much of an issue when you own or are responsible for both the machines you are using it on (say work and home), it can be a very big issue when you use a portable app on an untrusted or unknown machine (school, internet cafe, family member's PC, etc). For this reason, it is important that you practice Safe Portable App-ing! The Checklist • Use a solid antivirus program on your primary PC and keep its virus definitions up to date. • Scan your PC and portable drive for viruses on a regular basis. • Whenever you plug your portable drive into an unknown computer, you should assume that it may now be infected with a virus. If the PC has a virus that is currently in memory, it may attempt to infect your portable applications as soon as you plug it in. • When you then plug your portable drive into another computer (after an unknown), you should first scan it for viruses before running any of your applications. (Most antivirus software will make this available to you by right-clicking on your drive in Explorer or My Computer.) That way, if it is infected, you'll know before you run your applications and the new computer will not be infected. • Always wait until the drive access light has stopped blinking and then click the icon in your system tray to 'Safely Remove' your device. Don't just remove it. Just because the portable app's window is closed doesn't mean the app has fully closed and finished writing to the disk. • Back up your portable applications on a regular basis. If you follow these simple rules, you'll be able to enjoy your portable applications without getting stuck with a virus or losing your data. As always, there is still the risk of getting a new virus that your antivirus program can't yet detect, but the probability would be relatively low, and you run the same risk whenever you download a file from the internet. Thomas J McGrath III [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lazy River Software™ - http://www.lazyriversoftware.com Lazy River Metal Art™ - http://www.lazyriversoftware.com/metal.html Meeting Wear™ - http://www.cafepress.com/meetingwear Semantic Compaction Systems - http://www.minspeak.com SCIconics, LLC - http://www.sciconics.com/sciindex.html ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
RE: Portable Apps..?
Someone should create an antivirus program meant to be installed on a USB drive, and call it The USB Prophylactic, or some other play on the concept of a condom for your USB drive - meant to protect your computer from the dangers of STDs (Software Transmitted Diseases). -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Thomas McGrath III Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 8:28 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; How to use Revolution Subject: Re: Portable Apps..? Safe Portable App-ing An important thing to keep in mind when using portable applications is that they can be used to spread viruses between machines. While this isn't as much of an issue when you own or are responsible for both the machines you are using it on (say work and home), it can be a very big issue when you use a portable app on an untrusted or unknown machine (school, internet cafe, family member's PC, etc). For this reason, it is important that you practice Safe Portable App-ing! The Checklist * Use a solid antivirus program on your primary PC and keep its virus definitions up to date. * Scan your PC and portable drive for viruses on a regular basis. * Whenever you plug your portable drive into an unknown computer, you should assume that it may now be infected with a virus. If the PC has a virus that is currently in memory, it may attempt to infect your portable applications as soon as you plug it in. * When you then plug your portable drive into another computer (after an unknown), you should first scan it for viruses before running any of your applications. (Most antivirus software will make this available to you by right-clicking on your drive in Explorer or My Computer.) That way, if it is infected, you'll know before you run your applications and the new computer will not be infected. * Always wait until the drive access light has stopped blinking and then click the icon in your system tray to 'Safely Remove' your device. Don't just remove it. Just because the portable app's window is closed doesn't mean the app has fully closed and finished writing to the disk. * Back up your portable applications on a regular basis. If you follow these simple rules, you'll be able to enjoy your portable applications without getting stuck with a virus or losing your data. As always, there is still the risk of getting a new virus that your antivirus program can't yet detect, but the probability would be relatively low, and you run the same risk whenever you download a file from the internet. Thomas J McGrath III [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lazy River Software(tm) - http://www.lazyriversoftware.com Lazy River Metal Art(tm) - http://www.lazyriversoftware.com/metal.html Meeting Wear(tm) - http://www.cafepress.com/meetingwear Semantic Compaction Systems - http://www.minspeak.com SCIconics, LLC - http://www.sciconics.com/sciindex.html ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Hi Chipp, Any thoughts about this before I take the leap? One issue no one has mentioned is loading time for large stacks. I can run my Photo Portfolio standalone [almost 100 MB] from a UBC Jump Drive or from a CD-ROM; but it takes well over a minute to load. Rob Cozens, CCW Serendipity Software Company Vive R Revolution! ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Rob- Friday, January 13, 2006, 8:15:29 AM, you wrote: I can run my Photo Portfolio standalone [almost 100 MB] from a UBC Jump Drive or from a CD-ROM; but it takes well over a minute to load. I'm not surprised about the CDROM speeds - they're about the same as a floppy disk (...anybody remember floppy disks?). I can't find a good reference for UBC other than the U of British Columbia, but if you meant to say USB then you should consider switching to USB 2.0. The speed difference is dramatic. USB 1.1 transfer speeds are limited to 12MBits/second, while USB 2.0 can reach 480MBits/second. That should cut your minute down to a couple of seconds. -- -Mark Wieder [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Mark Wieder wrote: Rob- Friday, January 13, 2006, 8:15:29 AM, you wrote: I can run my Photo Portfolio standalone [almost 100 MB] from a UBC Jump Drive or from a CD-ROM; but it takes well over a minute to load. I'm not surprised about the CDROM speeds - they're about the same as a floppy disk (...anybody remember floppy disks?). I can't find a good reference for UBC other than the U of British Columbia, but if you meant to say USB then you should consider switching to USB 2.0. The speed difference is dramatic. USB 1.1 transfer speeds are limited to 12MBits/second, while USB 2.0 can reach 480MBits/second. That should cut your minute down to a couple of seconds. I could be mistaken, but I believe the difference is also a function of the type of RAM used in flash drives, since non-volatile RAM is slower than the type we use in computer memory. I.e., a USB flash drive should be expected to be slower than a USB hard drive. Or so I think. Anyone got the facts on the speed difference between Flash RAM and normal RAM? -- Richard Gaskin Managing Editor, revJournal ___ Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Just guessing, but even if it's non-volatile RAM, I would expect it to be faster than a hard drive as typically RAM writes are significantly faster than hard disk writes (think of your virtual memory cache). -Chipp Richard Gaskin wrote: I could be mistaken, but I believe the difference is also a function of the type of RAM used in flash drives, since non-volatile RAM is slower than the type we use in computer memory. I.e., a USB flash drive should be expected to be slower than a USB hard drive. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Chipp Walters wrote: Just guessing, but even if it's non-volatile RAM, I would expect it to be faster than a hard drive as typically RAM writes are significantly faster than hard disk writes (think of your virtual memory cache). Very different mechanism under the hood, from what little I know. I was able to turn up an interview with Seagate CEO Bill Watkins which addresses this: If you want to have a very rich audio or video experience, no matter what you do, you're going to need a hard drive. Flash memory can't handle the data rates that a hard drive can. The data rates on flash are too slow to handle high-quality video and audio. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2005/tc20050927_1608_tc057.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech I still haven't found specifics on Flash drive speed relative to hard drives, but at least we have one authoritative voice to confirm what we see in our own experience: Flash drives are convenient, but not necessarily zippy. -- Richard Gaskin Managing Editor, revJournal ___ Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Hmmm, Interesting. I was able to find some benchmarking: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/05/20/data_transfer_on_the_run/page11.html and at 20Mb/second for some USB 2.0 flash drives, I doubt it really matters which is faster. best, Chipp Richard Gaskin wrote: I still haven't found specifics on Flash drive speed relative to hard drives, but at least we have one authoritative voice to confirm what we see in our own experience: Flash drives are convenient, but not necessarily zippy. ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
I have to say I find it amusing that this portable apps concept is being touted as the next big thing. In days of old, virtually all Mac system 7/8 apps were portable -- it didn't matter from which location they were run. Then came the push to follow the Windows lead of having assigned locations for files that led to the designated Application/Document/etc folders and users were expected to follow the conventions. Now the pendulum swings back the other way and portable apps are a new idea. Make up your minds, people. :-) Regards, Scott Rossi Creative Director Tactile Media, Multimedia Design - E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] W: http://www.tactilemedia.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Portable Apps..?
I've been thinking a lot about this lately-- and I'm leaning on the side of creating next versions of my apps as mostly portable from now on. Portable apps have the distinguishing feature they are entirely self-contained in a single folder and can even be stored on USB drives if the user wishes. They are easy to install and delete and move, as well as maintain. For more info on portable apps check out: http://portableapps.com/ Here's my problems with the current system: Windows Different user management schemes have one store prefs/data/substacks/externals/plugins and documents in different areas. For instance upon installation, IF YOU HAVE THE RIGHT PREFS (ADMIN), you can 1) install executable and externals in: C:\Program Files\MyApp.exe 2) keep preferences, plugins, etc.. in: C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Application Data\MyApp\myPrefs.txt (not to mention the registry) 3) Keep documents in: C:\Documents and Settings\Chipp\My Documents\MyApp\myDoc.myd and God help you if you want to update something in the Program Files directory and you don't have permissions! So, updatable applications have more trouble, not to mention the problems with uninstalling with all of the various folders and content strewn about and customer support. The Mac is not too different as they have similar Applications folder, User/Library/Prefs folder and a Documents folder. Current installers can place these apps anywhere (including the Programs folder) and it appears more and more companies are opting for this type of installation. BTW, I do have the licensing figured out so that they aren't 'giveaways', so that's not an issue. Any thoughts about this before I take the leap? best, Chipp ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Chipp Walters wrote: I've been thinking a lot about this lately-- and I'm leaning on the side of creating next versions of my apps as mostly portable from now on. Portable apps have the distinguishing feature they are entirely self-contained in a single folder and can even be stored on USB drives if the user wishes. They are easy to install and delete and move, as well as maintain. For more info on portable apps check out: http://portableapps.com/ It sounds like a good idea. I can easily see the easy to install, delete and move - but I'm not quite so sure about the easy to maintain. It seems like there might be issues with any new version wishing to retain the existing user preferences and data. Any thoughts about this before I take the leap? I'd be interested in your thoughts on how you'll lay out the contents within the single folder. Maybe 3 (typically) sub-folders - application, prefs and data ? (with the user having the choice of putting data elsewhere, of course). How do portable apps work out for the non-portable user ? I currently have some (semi-) portable data - I have the same set of apps (but sometimes different prefs) set up on each machine I use regularly, and a flash-drive of my documents / data. So I can go from home to work computers with only the flash-drive full of data, and use the apps that are installed. Access to the local hard disks are significantly faster than my USB-1 flash drive, so I'd see a performance hit if I used the apps from that instead. That wouldn't be important if I was taking advantage of the portable apps (e.g. Internet cafe, or visiting friends) when the convenience would far outweigh the performance issue. I think this simply means that a portable app should be able to easily use data (and maybe even prefs) from a different location, but there may be other implications I haven't thought of yet. I think I'll download Firefox etc. from the site, use it exclusively for a week or two and see what issues I run into before joining you in that leap ... One more thought - are you considering cross-platform portable apps ?? A single folder that contains Windows + Mac + Linux apps ... to allow people to use whichever machine type is available; one step further than the portableapps site has done, but would be really cool, I think. -- Alex Tweedly http://www.tweedly.net -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.14.15/223 - Release Date: 06/01/2006 ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
From: Chipp Walters I've been thinking a lot about this lately-- and I'm leaning on the side of creating next versions of my apps as mostly portable from now on. . . . Any thoughts about this before I take the leap? My apps are completely portable, so far. I run them from a USB jumpdrive, on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I have the three flavors of StackRunner, each in its own folder (Windows version uses a couple of DLLs it needs handy). My app, in a set of .rev stacks, lives in an app folder. Plug it in, fire up the appropriate StackRunner, grab the stack file, and I'm off and running. No installation, no registry-diddling, no Applications folder fiddling, no shell command starter scripts. No more lugging laptops, either! Jerry Muelver ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Chipp Walters wrote: I've been thinking a lot about this lately-- and I'm leaning on the side of creating next versions of my apps as mostly portable from now on. Portable apps have the distinguishing feature they are entirely self-contained in a single folder and can even be stored on USB drives if the user wishes. They are easy to install and delete and move, as well as maintain. For more info on portable apps check out: http://portableapps.com/ ... Any thoughts about this before I take the leap? The thread checking removable drives in this archive has some discussion on this: http://lists.runrev.com/pipermail/use-revolution/2005-November/thread.html One solution is for the app to attempt to write to its own folder, and if that fails then it writes where the OS vendor recommends. Another is to use a DriveType external. Mark Weider was kind enough to send me his. -- Richard Gaskin Managing Editor, revJournal ___ Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Re: Portable Apps..?
Alex Tweedly wrote: I can easily see the easy to install, delete and move - but I'm not quite so sure about the easy to maintain. It seems like there might be issues with any new version wishing to retain the existing user preferences and data. I'm thinking my apps are all updated over the internet, so new versions wouldn't have a problem with prefs. I license 1 app to 1 person, so I'm not worried about multiple users. I'd be interested in your thoughts on how you'll lay out the contents within the single folder. Maybe 3 (typically) sub-folders - application, prefs and data ? (with the user having the choice of putting data elsewhere, of course). Yes, indeed something like that. How do portable apps work out for the non-portable user ? They could install it anywhere they like on their hard drive. Program Files if they wanted to. One more thought - are you considering cross-platform portable apps ?? A single folder that contains Windows + Mac + Linux apps ... to allow people to use whichever machine type is available; one step further than the portableapps site has done, but would be really cool, I think. Wow! That's a very cool idea. I think I'll be sure and architect for it. Could be a great selling point, especially if you only use a single splashscreen standalone for each platform (like I typically do anyway). -Chipp ___ use-revolution mailing list use-revolution@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
