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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Open Source, Windows x64

4 portable app suites to power up your USB flash drive

Portable applications suites are a great way to get your hands on a ton of useful software with minimal fuss. Got a new flash drive, or maybe an old one you don't know what to do with?

Throw one of these suites on it and you've got an instant software Swiss Army Knife.

PortableApps.com - John T. Haller's project is the most well-known suite on the 'net. It includes Firefox, OpenOffice (or AbiWord in the light version), Pidgin, Thunderbird, Sunbird, Sumatra PDF, KeePass, and more. Haller is very good for keeping the core up-to-date - you'll usually see new versions of the Mozilla apps the same day they're released.

LiberKey - The Ultimate version will take up half a gig on your drive, and it's packed with useful programs, including technician favorites like CPU-Z, RegShot, Revo Uninstaller, Unlocker. There are also loads of multimedia, networking, and internet apps. The 180Mb basic version is a lot like PortableApps with the addition of Piriform's tools (CCleaner, Defraggler, Recuva). They've got a handy comparison chart posted as well. One omission worth noting: OpenOffice.

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Filed under: Weekend Review

Download Squad Week in Review

Download SquadBeen busy preparing to announce your presidential candidacy on Meet the Press? Now that the big day's come, you might find yourself with some free time on your hands. So why not catch up on a few Download Squad stories you may have missed this week?

Sega prototypes released


Early last week we let you know that a member of the Sonic Retro Forums managed to get his hands on hundreds of classic Sega material including documentation, game prototypes. This weekend, DRX released over 1,000 game prototypes.

Easily run Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 beta side by side in OS X

Want to check out the latest beta version of Firefox 3, but don't want to overwrite your Firefox 2 settings? You could try backing up your user settings and creating a new profile. Or if you're using OS X you could just install MultiFireFox which simplifies the whole process.

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Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

winPenPack: Portable application suite for your flash drive

winPenPackWe love portable applications. You know, the kind that you can run from a single executable file without installing them to your computer. There's no need to uninstall portable applications you're not using. You can just delete them. And they don't make crazy changes to your Windows registry. Best of all, you can run them from removable media like a USB flash drive.

There a couple of great resource for portable applications, including the Portable Freeware Collection, which maintains a good list of applications and PortableApps, which not only has a list of programs that you can run from a Flash drive, but a nifty application launcher for your portable programs.

Like PortableApps, winPenPack offers a bundle of portable applications and a handy program launcher. There are several different winPenPack bundles available, ranging from an Essentials pack which weighs about takes up a few hundred MB to a 1GB version which packs a whole boatload of software. The Essentials pack still has a lot of great software including Firefox, Thunderbird, Filezilla, Gimp, Kompozer, and Pidgin.
There are also special versions labeled "school," and "games" that come with more specialized applications. When you first run winPenPack you'll notice that most of the menus are in Italian, even if you manage to find the option to change the language to English. But you can also download a 44MB ZIP language pack. Once you unpack that file to your installation directory your menus should appear in English.

[via TechnoBuzz]

Featured Time Waster

Graveyard Shift - zombie-busting Time Waster

With Halloween fast approaching, it's a great time to get in some practice defending your territory against zombies. In Graveyard Shift, you take aim at zombies and other creepy-crawlies, blasting them into splatters of cartoony green guts. It's a casual first-person shooter, and it's very easy to get the hang of - use the mouse to aim, click to fire. Graveyard Shift has at least 15 levels, and it might even have some secret stages I haven't unlocked yet. They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...

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