53 Portable Applications that Every Tech Needs

For the past couple of years, portable apps have gained a considerable amount of popularity. The reason for such a sharp incline is that carrying portable applications within your Pen Drive is a lot easier rather than carrying your laptop where ever you go.

Keeping this fact in mind. I have compiled a list that deals with those applications that are most common is use and will definitely help you out while performing different tasks. You can choose any application that best suites your need, install it on your USB Drive and then carry it anywhere you go.

1. Spybot Portable Anti Spyware

Spybot Search and Destroy was created to find and remove all kind of spyware from your PC. Some signs can suggest you the computer is infected or is a risk.

2. Convert

Convert is an easy to use unit conversion program that will convert the most popular units of distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass, power, density, pressure, energy and many others, including the ability to create custom conversions!

3. Angry IP Scanner

Scan a range of IP addresses to see which ones are in use. Also tells you hostname, MAC address, open ports, computer name, workgroup, and logged in Windows users.

4. CPU-Z

Very detailed information about your processor and other components.

5. CDex

CDex is a CD-Ripper, extracting digital audio data from an Audio CD. The application supports many Audio encoders, like MPEG (MP2,MP3), VQF, AAC encoders

6. Bitcomet

BitComet is a fast and easy-to-use BitTorrent/HTTP/FTP download client. It is P2P file-sharing freeware and one of the most popular P2P protocols designed for high-speed distribution.

7. Mega Mario

Clone of Super Mario Brothers, which expands or improves upon just about every feature of the original.

8. WinAudit

Another analysis tool that is useful for finding out information about a computer.

9. Trillian

Trillian is a fully featured, stand-alone chat client that supports AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, and IRC.

10. Treesize Free

TreeSize Free tells you where precious space has gone to. TreeSize Free can be started from the context menu of a folder or drive and shows you the size of this folder, including its subfolders.

11. Skype

Skype is software that enables you to make free calls anywhere in the world. Skype uses innovative P2P (peer-to-peer) technology to connect you with other users.

12. Follow-Me IP

Utility for finding your external IP address quickly.

13. Baby FTP

This Baby FTP server has only the most necessary features and is yet powerful enough to be a basis for a more complex server.

14. IE Privacy keeper

IE Privacy Keeper automatically cleans up the browser history once you are done surfing the net. The program will correctly clean up all index.dat files without the need for a Windows restart.

15. AcroPAD

AcroPAD is a simple Notepad-like program with PDF production capability. Handy for quick generation of simple PDF documents.

16. Dekart Light

Dekart Private Disk Light is free disk encryption software for Windows. This free disk encryption software creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk.

17. PStart

A Start Menu like program that allows you to organize and quickly run your portable programs.

18. Teamviewer

TeamViewer is a simple and fast solution for remote control, desktop sharing and file transfer that works behind any firewall and NAT proxy.

19. Winamp

Winamp Lite enables you to listen to music, watch videos, rip and burn CD’s and much more.

20. Faststone

FastStone Capture is a powerful, flexible and intuitive screen-capture utility. It allows you to capture anything on the screen including windows, objects, full screen, rectangle regions, freehand-selected regions and scrolling windows/web pages.

21. Restoration

Allows you to undelete files that have been accidentally deleted from the computer.

22. Infra Recorder Portable

Portable CD/DVD burning software.

23. CDBurner XP

Writes all kind of mediums apart from double-layer DVD. Burning video-DVD’s is limited though.

24. Defrag GUI

Power Defragmenter is based on Sysinternals defragmentation “engine”. Basically its just a very advanced GUI for the Sysinternals core application which takes defragmentation process to a whole new level.

25. HijackFree

A-squared HiJackFree is a detailed system analysis tool which helps advanced users to detect and remove all types of HiJackers, Spyware, Adware, Trojans and Worms.

26. Resource Hacker

Resource HackerTM is a freeware utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executable and resource files (*.res).

27. Wiki on a Stick

Useful for storing product keys, configurations notes and more.

28. Screamer

Screamer Radio is an Internet radio player ready with hundreds of easily recordable radio stations at your fingertips.

29. JkDefrag

Disk optimizer and defragmenter.

30. ClamWin Portable

ClamWin Portable is the popular ClamWin antivirus packaged as a portable application, so you can take your antivirus with you to scan files on the go

31. Stress Prime 2004

A stress test for CPUs and Memory.

32. Faststone Capture

FastStone Capture is a powerful, lightweight, yet full-featured screen capture tool that allows you to easily capture and annotate anything on the screen including windows, objects, menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand regions and even scrolling windows/Web pages.

33. HiJackThis

A hijacker detector and remover. Outputs information to a log file so you can share the results with others when needing help.

34. Avast! Virus Cleaner

Scans the computer for a specific set of viruses and worms.

35. LockNote

A simple text file that allows you to store usernames, passwords, phone numbers, and more with 256bit password encryption.

36. SIW

A system analysis tool that tells you almost everything you need to know about a computer. Useful for finding information about your hardware, Windows configuration, and settings.

37. VDownloader

Search for videos in sites like YouTube, DailyMotion, Yahoo, Megaupload, or Google at the same time. You can watch, download, or save videos with just one click.

38. RockXP

View and change product keys for installed Microsoft products including Windows very quickly.

39. PuTTY Portable

PuTTY Portable is the popular PuTTY telnet and SSH client packaged as a portable app, so you can connect in to your systems on the go.

40. Irfanview

IrfanView is a fast and compact image viewer/converter. It is trying to be simple for beginners and powerful for professionals. Many supported file formats and features.

41. Portable Opera

If you would rather use Opera it is also available in portable format.

42. Notepad++

Notepad++ Portable is the handy Notepad++ text editor packaged as a portable app so you can do your development on the go.

43. McAfee Stinger

A stand-alone utility that scans for and removes specific viruses.

44. Opera USB

Opera is a fast and secure web browser that features pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, built-in email and RSS client etc.

45. Server2Go

Allows you to install an apache webserver right on to your flash drive with no configuration.

46. NetSetMan

NetSetMan is a network settings manager which can easily switch between 6 different profiles, each with its IP address, DNS server, default printer, etc.

47. Abiword

AbiWord Portable is the lightweight AbiWord word processor packaged as a portable app, so you can edit your documents on the go.

48. CurrPorts

Allows you to see detailed information about all of the TCP/IP and UDP ports being used on the computer including which program is using them.

49. PStart

Start is a simple tray tool to start user defined applications. Designed to run portable applications.

50. PC Decrapifier

Uninstalls trialware and annoyances from new computers. Makes cleaning up a new computer much easier and saves a lot of time.

51. HFS

An http file server that allows you to easily share files right from your USB drive.

52. Total Commander

Total Commander is a file manager for Windows, a program like Windows Explorer to copy, move or delete files. However, Total Commander can do much more than Explorer.

53. Unstoppable Copier

Copies files from disks that have physical damage.

What?! Your favorite application is not in the list! Drop a comment and we’ll add this to our list.