PortableApps is a menu and application launcher system that runs on/from a USB device. In fact it can be run from any drive, I have my netbook's hard drive partitioned and run PortableApps on my D: drive.

For today's AGM hands-on session you can experiment using the H: drive on the lecture room computers - this will be faster than using a USB device

The home of PortableApps is http://portableapps.com

Within this I suggest you first browse the range of Apps available on http://portableapps.com/apps

Then look at the download page http://portableapps.com/download

I suggest you go for the beta release of version 2, as suggested on the download page. This download installs just the base menu system. If you wish, the v1.6.1 download page offers three packages - base, light and standard (= heavy!)

Download the beta v“ installer to the desktop (or if you are like me, to a folder 'PortableDownloads' on your memory stick).

Then run it, making sure to set the drive to either H: or your USB memory stick.

You should now have two folders on that drive:

This is your portable 'My Documents' folder, many Portable Apps (especially the office ones) will use this automatically.

This is your portable 'Program Files' folder … and more. Each packaged App will contain within its folder three sub-folders 'App', 'Data' and 'Other'. Portable Apps don't use the host computer's registry, they store all their settings in the 'Data' folder, so it's also the portable 'Applications & Settings' folder.

As well as the folders, you'll find a program 'StartPortableApps.exe' and an Autorun.inf file. Autoruns are increasingly frowned upon so you may have to explicitly run the 'StartPortableApps' executable.

The menu system will pop up (by default in the bottom right of the screen) and will auto-hide after a short while. You can bring it up again by clicking on the PortableApps icon in the system notification area. You can also just run 'StartPortableApps' again if you wish!

You can download each installer from the Apps directory (you browsed that earlier) or you can bring up your newly installed but empty Portableapps menu and click on 'Manage Apps'.

Start gently! I suggest you start by just ticking two or three Apps - FireFox, 7-Zip and Xenon would be my suggestions. Personally, I'd include NotePad++ as well but you may prefer another plain text editor.

Copy or move your Pedigree folder into the PorrtableApps folder. Open the file Peditree.ini and add these two lines at the end:

[Folder]
StartFolder=%cd%

When you next pop up the PortableApps menu you should find PediTree listed, click it and you should find that the Open menu defaults to your PortablePedigree folder!

To start with, I suggest you add two Apps to your menu:

• from the Utilities section
  • Command Prompt Portable
• and from the games section
  • DOSBox Portable

Some black magic?