Does your office IT villains not let you install anything?
Sidin Vadukut -
Wednesday, June 18, 2008 5:48 PM
Pardon the blase headline. I am trying to experiment with blatantly obvious headlines to see if that helps create more traffic and perhaps a few more comments. (Serious guys. I could use some dialogue in these parts. Comment is free.)
Okay so how bad are those villains in your IT department? Do they make you send an email to the "IT helpdesk" and then fill out a form and ring up several faceless fiends before sending over some one to "log in as Administrator" on your computer? And all that drama just to install that latest version of Firefox or a simple little unzipping application?
Well don't tell anyone but I have the perfect solution for you. A solution so obvious, so simple that when it occured to me I slapped my forehead with my palm and immediately decided I must share it with you "Play Things" readers.
Now first we will aquaint ourselves with the concept of Portable Apps (PA). PAs were initially developed for people to carry certain applications on their pen drives. This way, when they travelled somewhere and had to use an alien computer, they could just plug in their pendrive and power up their favourite browsers, Skype clients and such like even if it wasn't on the host machine.
The applications resided on the drives and ran without any need for installation and configuration.
Usually, when you install apps on a PC, they do all sort of mysterious things like creating folders and copying files in all sorts of hidden away places on your PC. (You normally need to login as Administrator to do this. And therefore the IT Deparment imposed slave-dom.)
But PAs are packaged to run without any of these mysterious activities. All required files and configuration are pre-saved in neat little folders. When you double click a portable app it starts as usual but without using any info on your PC. The pen-drive has everything it needs to run. It installs nothing.
So one solution for you is to carry a pen drive with all the portable apps stored on them. Plug it into your office PC and use the app you like without IT knowing a thing.
The even smarter thing to do is to download these PAs and then just unzip them into folders on your PC. The PA can't say the difference between your PC or a pen drive and creates all those neat little folders right there on your desktop. Peep into the folder and voila! you have the app you need right there, souped up and ready to go. Double click and you have Firefox or Skype or Opera in all its glory without any need for installation.
Because the PA has everything it needs in the folder on your desktop, it bypasses all the usual installation activity.
Go to www.portableapps.com to download an array of apps that run out of simple folders like I mentioned. Tomorrow I will put up a tutorial with screen shots on how to do it yourself. Drop a comment if you need any further help.
Have fun freaking out with all sorts of apps in your office. And please be smart and make sure you aren't downloading viruses. The IT guys tend to frown upon such things.