Unit #2 - Portable Apps

PortableApps.com (on-going activity)

Visit www.PortableApps.com/apps

Your task over the semester will be to try out and evaluate at least 10 different programs that are freely available on the Internet.  We will PortableApps.com. (see sidebar about PortableApps)

You may choose any software available on this site (providing it is school appropriate and not used for destructive purposes).

You must review 10 programs,
            and only 1 may be a game.

Post your reviews on your Weebly site. 
  • Make a new "Blog" called "Reviews".

    In each Review, answer these questions:
  1. Name of Software: ("The reviewed software is called ...")
  2. Software Location: ("I downloaded the software from ...")
  3. Purpose of Software ("This software is for ...")
  4. Your Activity ("Once it was running, I was able to ...")
    - You must spend at least 15 minutes using the software
  5. Ease of Setup ("Download and 'install' were easy and to get the software running I had to ... .  It was easy.")
  6. Ease of Use ("The software confused me when ... but ...")
  7. Stars / 10 ("In my opinion, this software is worth 2 stars out of 10 because ..." [or 0/10 or 9/10 or ...] )

Software Mr. Rich has used before

If you're looking for ideas, here are a list of programs
that I have used before:
  1. Audacity - audio editor
  2. fre:ac - audio file converter / extractor/ encoder
  3. VLC - plays almost any video format, including DVDs
  4. Celestia - Space simulator
  5. Stellarium - Star maps
  6. TIPP10 - Learn to type / keyboard
  7. TypeFaster - Learn to type / keyboard
  8. 7-zip - best zipping program ever!
  9. Dia - diagram maker
  10. GIMP - image editor (raster graphics)
  11. Inkscape - image editor (vector graphics)
  12. IrfanView - view & edit multiple images at once
  13. PicPick - easy screen capture & color picker
  14. XnView - view & edit multiple images at once
  15. AbiWord - simplified word processor (like MS Word)
  16. Foxit - Opens PDF documents
  17. Gnumeric - spreadsheet (like MS Excel)
  18. LibreOffice - full office suite (MS Word,Excel,PPT,...)
  19. OpenOffice.org - full office suite (~ LibreOffice)
  20. Mozilla Thunderbird - email program (like MS Outlook)
  21. Scribus - desktop publishing
  22. Stickies - sticky notes for your desktop
  23. CamStudio - For making screen capture videos
  24. ClamWin - anti-virus (virus removal)
  25. Spybot - Search & Destroy - spyware removal
  26. Chrome - portable version of the web browser
  27. Iron - portable version of Chrome, but more secure
  28. Mozilla Firefox - portable version of the web browser
  29. Opera - portable version of the web browser
  30. SeaMonkey - portable version of the web browser
  31. Notepad++ - Best and simplest text editor (colors!)
  32. gVIM - Another simple text editor
  33. Nvu / KompoZer - HTML editor (WYSIWYG or code)
  34. VirtualDub - simplified video editor (very limited)
  35. XAMPP - Turn your computer into a web server! (hard!)
  36. Blender - 3D animation (hard!)

Visit PortableApps.com/apps

Picture
These applications are specially built to be 'installed' on any Windows computer.  They do not require administrator privileges, as they don't do a 'proper' Windows install.

Instead...

Download Img


  • Look for this green download button
  • Wait for the download to complete
  • The 'installer' file will unzip the program to a folder
  • When you're done using the program, just delete the folder and it's gone!  (No worrying about registries or anything!)
Because of this 'install' method, portable apps may run slower than normal.