Technically, you can’t install software on your work computer because, you don’t have necessary privileges for it. We are only given the normal user privileges. Gaining the privileges of an administrator enables lot of features in the system. Like, you can install any software you want, you can change system files, you can change your boot options, and many more…

With Portable applications to your rescue, the first one is a problem no more. Now, what are these portable applications? As their name suggests, they are portable. Portable in the sense that, they can be carried from one place to another without losing any of that application related data. They need not be installed. They just need to be run! You don’t need to be an administrator or some power user to install these applications on your system.

Imagine, you were working in the office and you are not done with your work yet. Now, you need to go home and continue your work from there. The only thing, you could have then wished is to carry your work environment with you (which may not be possible always).

Using portable application for your day-to-day activities gives you the ease and flexibility of carrying your environment with you always. You can carry them in a USB thumb drive even. Portable applications leaves NO trace on the system.

In short, using Portable applications offers these benefits:

• No special privileges or permissions required to install them.
• They leave NO traces behind on the system, they were used.
• Your productivity significantly increases as you carry your environment with you always.
• You can now safely do your work at a net-cafe or on a public computer.
• They can be run even from USB drives.
• A huge collection of portable software is available for free.

There is a vast suite of portable applications that are available for different purposes, including, OS’s, anti-virus, games, browser, word-processors, pdf reader, cd/dvd creators, torrents, music organisers, remote connections, messengers, compression softwares, IP TV, VoIP.

Lot of softwares that I have earlier covered are available in portable formats too. Few very useful portable applications are Ubuntu, Knoppix, Pendrivelinux, Avast anti-virus, Claimwin, Opera, Firefox, Poker, Sudoku, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, GIMP, 7-Zip, Filezilla FTP, uTorrent, Putty, WinSCP, Tight VNC, Pidgin, InfraRecorder, Sumatra PDF Reader, foobar2000, Winamp, Yamipod (iPod alternative), etc.,

Useful Tip:

You can create a folder on the local hard-drive of the system you want to work and then copy the contents of the USB drive into that folder. This way, there is comparatively lesser wear-and-tear on the flash drives than from running those applications from them. Also that, read’s and write’s to and from the hard-drives are much faster. Once, your work is done, you can sync the folders on your hard-drive with the USB drives.

Open source software’s (ex: Firefox) and free software’s (ex: Opera) have been rapidly gaining real estate on our desktops and laptops. People who really have nourished this benefit had one more wish. That is, customized software on other consumer products. In other words, it’s asking for custom firmware on your house-hold products. In the recent past, there have been lot of work going on these by the communities of both the worlds. And so, we end-users now have custom firmware available for products like routers, music players, cameras, etc. This list is growing pretty fast.

• Routers:

A router’s speed is defined by the hardware in that device and the firmware driving it. In spite of having good hardware, if the firmware is not that solid, your router tends to perform with far less than expected results. This generally is the case, when most of the manufactures are in a hurry to-the-market. They don’t concentrate much on the software or firmware quality. Their priority is just to become the first to enter the market. As the market is getting flooded with lot of early adaptors, manufacturers focus towards quality is still diminishing.

This is the real cause for not having at-least some of the basic features on your router.

There comes the dd-wrt firmware. Flashing it on your router will give your router the required signal boost which you have always craved for. It makes your router deliver much better-than-before results. With dd-wrt, You also get lot of additional functionality which you could have probably never wished to get from your manufacturer.

Know more about the custom firmware for your router here.

There is a good article on How-To-Turn-Your-$60-Router-To-A-$600-Router.

• Music Players:

While using your music players, how many times would you have thought “if this feature would have been there?”. Lot of manufacturers (in-fact, everyone) provides you with a firmware on their product which is most of the times not-so-good at the best.

How many times, would you have wished for better audio quality?
How many times, would you have wished for a small real time clock on your device’s screen (if any)?
Did you ever wish for additional codec support?
Did you ever wish for playing games on the tiny screen (if any) of your device?
How many time have you been not satisfied by your device’s random function?
Did you ever wish for easy-to-use on-the-go playlist creation?

If you have ever wanted any of the above features, what would you do? Go and buy the latest player available at that time from the market? Even after that, I guarantee that, it would still leave some of your desires un-fulfilled. So, buying the latest player for feature upgrade may not be the ideal solution.

Instead of switching players, the very best alternate solution may be to switch to a firmware that provides you those features. Rockbox is an open source firmware replacement for your digital audio players. Rockbox provides all these above features and a lot more. Following the instructions to flash your device with Rockbox firmware is very easy. Rockbox makes your device dual-bootable. That means, you can always go back to your manufacturer provided firmware anytime. This is incredibly awesome.

Know more about the custom firmware for your music player here.

• Cameras:

(Only Canons)
Even, in my dreams, I would have not expected a custom firmware on the digital cameras. But the CHDK community have come those dreams come true.

The CHDK program on your camera gives you Live Histogram, Battery Indicator, Motion-Detection triggered photography, Zoom during videos, File browser, Text reader, Calendar, Games and many more fun tools and utilities.

Know more about the custom firmware for your digital camera (Canon) here.

• Game Consoles:

Each time, he cracks the firmware, Sony patches it back in their next firmware release. He then again provides the crack to the new firmware. Then, Sony makes the move and then he and so on…

We are talking about the firmware for the ultimate gaming hand-held console, the Sony PSP. And, then, we are talking of the Homebrew developer, Dark_Alex. He is very well known amongst the PSP gamers. Lot of gamers literally wait anxiously for his firmware releases. No one has unlocked the PSP firmware as better as Dark_Alex. He always betters Sony’s official PSP firmware. After some sort of confusion with Sony, Dark_Alex said he was going to quit the homebrew scene forever. And then immediately afterwards, Team M33 appeared with a custom firmware. It was revealed later that, both Dark_Alex and M33 are same. You can find official M33 builds here.

Know more about the custom firmware for your Sony PSP (Phat & Slim) here.

All the manufacturers follows the common “upgrading path” principle. If they sell their best to you today, what would they sell you tomorrow? They all just leave you at a point, where you wish for more from their next products.

Here, I have tried to compile and present to you, some of the best alternatives that you can get from the open source community.

Remember: Few of them may not be the real best yet, but they are so far very promising and steadily growing. Also, they are for FREE.

• Ubuntu <– Windows/Mac OS X

In the recent days, Ubuntu has been really gaining lot of space and love in the desktops & laptops. Thanks to the great support from its community. With the recent launch of it’s version 8.04 (Hardy Heron), it is seriously being looked as a worthy alternative to Windows & Mac OS.

• OpenOffice <– MS Office

A really sturdy and a good alternative for the MS Office. OpenOffice.org has gained lot of fans and users for itself. With the recent launch of 3.0 beta version, it is well understood, it’s gonna give someone some serious trouble. If your job is just some simple word editing and stuff, it is worth recommending Abiword. A very light-weight word processing software.

• Gimp <– Photoshop

It’s not yet completely ready to replace Photoshop, but it is steadily growing. If you are not looking for a complete professional photo editing software, then Gimp provides you lot more than that. A definite keeper for such.

• Firefox <– Internet Explorer/Safari

I am pretty sure, lot of you would be reading this on Firefox now. If not, fret not! You always have your right to download it and start firing it. Firefox from Mozilla is only poised for still greater heights with the scheduled June launch for its final version, Firefox3. It has gained enormous ground with its v3.0 beta releases and the RC’s. A very very serious threat to MS for its IE and Apple for its Safari browsers.
What makes Firefox the best browser around is it’s enormous add-ons support. Combined together, they make your browsing life a lot better. Very highly recommended.

• Thunderbird <– Outlook Express

Here comes one more thunder product from the labs of Mozilla! Add-ons are it’s high-point. Thunderbird has all that needs to replace MS Outlook Express.

• 7-Zip <– Winzip

A clean, simple and neat compressor/de-compressor which supports lots of formats including tar, bzip2, zip, rar and many more…

• Infra Recorder <– Nero

Why would you pay for Nero when you can get everything related to CD/DVD burning with Infra Recorder for free. Time to say bye-bye to Nero or any other paid (or illegally gotten) software that you might be using.

• UltraVNC <– VNC

An ultimate remote desktop tool. It can display the screen of other computer (via internet or network) on your computer. Ultra VNC is powerful, simple-to-use. It also has add-on support!

• Audacity <– Adobe Audition

Audacity is a clean software for editing and recording sounds. It is already good and still improving.

• VLC <– Media Player

I personally beleive: “If VLC can’t play it properly, then lots of other software won’t even understand it”. Just throw a file at VLC and it plays it for you. It’s a highly portable multimedia player. I have personally used it as a server to stream in multicast in IPv4. It can also do unicast and IPv6!
Also, worth mentioning is about MPlayer. Both of these are higly recommended.

• Pidgin <– Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk, etc.

The best place to meet all your friends from Yahoo, MSN, Google Talk or any other messaging client at a single place. Pidgin is a multi-protocol instant messaging client that allows you to use all your IM’s at once. Start using Pigdin and you will forget the rest. By-the-way, no more need to tolerate the crapware that yahoo or any of your other provider gives you with their messenger!

• Songbird <– iTunes

Songbird has already gained popularity with its beta versions. It has an in-built browser. It is based on Firefox. It has good add-on support. The iPod add-on has been very popular. It also has an in-built ID3 Tag editor. It just needs to show some love for the Zune to make it the one-stop-music-player for all your devices. (Zune uses a proprietary MTPZ protocol whereas the rest uses the standard MTP protocol)

• foobar2000 <– Winamp

foobar2000 is an advanced audio player for the Windows platform. It is what Winamp was once. It can play almost all the audio formats known. A very good audio player and highly recommended.

• Sumatra <– Acrobat Reader

How many times, would you have got impatient by the time, that Acrobat Reader takes to open a simple PDF file. For all those of you, here comes Sumatra. Simple, portable and fast. Gets your job done.

• Miro <– IP TV

What is Miro for? Get it, it’s your free HD TV. It also allows you to download the videos. It even plays your stand-alone media files. Plays all kind of formats including Quicktime, MPEG, AVI, XVID, WMV and many more… Btw, it also has a built-in BitTorrent client. Aren’t these enough reasons to rejoice!

• Gantt Chart <– MS Project

Is it really an alternative to MS Project? Well, I personally haven’t tried it but only heard good about it. Definitely a project to watch out for. And, so is OpenProj.

• Gizmo Project <– Skype

It has been known by many as the “Skype-killer”. It is an open source VoIP solution enabling you for free PC-to-PC calls. It also offers call-in and call-out facility at very good rates. It also has interoperability with other SIP clients like Google Talk and Jabbin. Also, don’t forget the video calling!

If you are using any of the ones listed above, please share your views. Also, feel free to mention any others that you felt worth mentioning.

Edit: foobar2000 and Gizmo are not open source. Sorry for the confusion. Thanks petesalah for pointing this out.

It is basically a tool that enables users to search by calling a toll-free number (1-800-GOOG-411). This service is totally based on speech-recognition technology. Once a user makes call to 411 toll-free number, the system asks the user, the place (city, state, zip) where the search needs to be done. User can now search for any business by name or its category, which generates a list of matching results. Then, a number corresponding to the desired result is either spoken or keyed-in by the user on the phone. User can now ask Google to connect to the business nuber directly or send an SMS with the necessary information. If you want to connect to the business number, Google does this for you for FREE. That’s it, it’s that simple. Order your Pizza, Book your movie tickets, Shop your favourite gizmo and do lots of stuff from your own comfort! Goodbye to those heavy yellow pages!

Simple Steps:
Make a call to 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411)
State the Location and the Business name (for ex., Location is New York & Business is Pizza)
Select from the list of results (If there are multiple options, you can either speak out your choice or key-in on the keypad of your phone)
Connect to the Business for FREE
That’s it! Place your Order!

Needless to say, this is simply awesome!

This service is available in US and Canada from its day of launch.
Google India has now introduced this service in Hyderabad, India. Hyderabad users have to call (1-800-419-9999). Now, the movie loving city has one more reason to rejoice!

Toll-free number for USA & Canada – 1-800-GOOG-411
Toll-free number for Hyderabad – 1-800-419-9999