Smallware

Smallware?

Hmm… lets see, I’ve got sofware, hardware, freeware, shareware, postcardware, aware, beware. What the hell is smallware?

Mark of MarkTAW defines it as

“a lot of little programs to make my day-to-day life easier”. Most of these programs are under a megabyte and don’t require an install. I use some of them every day, and others I use only occasionally. All of them are free.

nedwolf calls it Portable Software.

Portable software runs on your USB key drive or your iPod, or a memory stick, or any type of external drive you plug into a USB port. You don’t have to install anything on the computer’s hard drive. It’s like carrying your office around with you. Or… carrying your home to the office.

And then there’s John Haller who did the work on

  • Portable Firefox – Run the Mozilla Firefox web browser from a removable/USB drive
  • Portable Firefox Live – Run Portable Firefox from a CD-R
  • Portable NVU – Run the NVU website editor from a removable/USB drive
  • Portable Sunbird – Run the Mozilla Sunbird calendar from a removable/USB drive
  • Portable Thunderbird – Run the Mozilla Thunderbird email client from a removable/USB drive
  • Portable OpenOffice and Portable AbiWord

So stroll over to TinyApps where there is a ton of these small useful programs. Most will happily sit on your USB memory thingie and dont even require an install. Have a look around and I feel sure there will be on or two items where you go “Oh that’s a good idea”.

Have fun.

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