Why PortableApps.com is becoming irrelevant Wednesday, November 22, 2006
12 months ago, I think I would have been excited by the notion that I could carry my important programs along with all of my bookmarks, settings, email and more with me on a flash drive/memory stick, such that I could use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind. This is what PortableApps provides.
But today virtually all of my data and applications are online, accessible via a browser. Since it's increasingly rare to find a computer without a browser and internet connection these days, so I can dispense with the need to carry the memory stick. Moreover, people are far more relaxed about someone using their browser that connecting a memory stick to their PCs.
The only times I have encountered difficulties have been when the browser in question didn't have important add-ins like current java run-time engines [albeit I do find using older browser versions like IE6 frustrating because of missing features like tabbed browser windows]. Similarly, I can't recall having hit firewall issues for sometime, since most of the applications/data goes via Port 80.
Whilst PortableApps is free and will undoubtedly be useful to some, I believe this may be a evolutionary stepping stone that gets skipped over.
posted by John Wilson @ 8:45 AM Permanent Link
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