Andre, Of course, what I'm specifically looking to do (or, rather have my students do) IS a hack -- of IT's iron-fisted grip on what software that can be used in the classroom.
I did think about the speed issue... but our network's so crappy that slow isn't going to strike the students as particularly odd :-/ Judy On Tue, 15 May 2007, Andre Garzia wrote: > > > > portableapps.com always felt like a hack for me. It uses NDIS (or > some other acronym) wrapper to hack around the folders tricking the > enclosed executable to think it is writting to one place when it is > actually writting to someplace else like the removable media folder. > This solves some issues but it brings other problems. > > Let us go to the important problems (IMHO): > * Removable media is slow. If your app does a lot of file juggling or > is very disk based, you'll see performance penalty, specially if > you're using cheap no brand pendrives. > * Limited writting life of flash drives. You can't write on them > forever, they have a limit and they will fail. I don't think a > pendrive can stand like a year of heavy use but some application that > access the disk too much. I can't quote on the limits but they exist. > > Good portable apps are designed to be portable from the start, not > hacked afterward with some tricky folder-phantomizing-tool. Portable > apps should load all data they need and run from RAM without touching > the disk, or only touching the disk when it needs to save permanent > data. This will not only save your precious pendrive but also run way > faster than some disk happy tool. > > And if you're designing your app to be portable from the start, you > don't need U3. You can build your own launcher. You can join the U4 > yahoo group and help the efforts. U3 good side is not the technology > but the marketing, it gave apps exposure and a portal that the user > could navigate and find stuff. I don't like portableapps.com but it > gives you exposure and lots of users, from a marketing standpoint it > is cool, from a tech standpoint it feels like a hack to me. > > also, their portableapps menu never worked on win98 or win2000 for me. > > andre > > > That's a good question. I would imagine RunRev has a U3 version, > > and if they've done that much work it's far easier to make one > > that'll run on any flash drive. I couldn't find either on the > > Download page, though -- anyone know if that's in the works? > > > > For apps that are known to be portable, the directory at > > PortableApps.com is a good starting point: > > > > <http://portableapps.com/apps> > > > > > > -- > > Richard Gaskin > > Managing Editor, revJournal > > _______________________________________________________ > > Rev tips, tutorials and more: http://www.revJournal.com > > _______________________________________________ > > use-revolution mailing list > > [email protected] > > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your > > subscription preferences: > > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution > > _______________________________________________ > use-revolution mailing list > [email protected] > Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription > preferences: > http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution > _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
