A representative comment is as follows:
My position is this:Chris L. Franklin: with a dependence like Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 and above. Can this really classified as portable, I mean if so then why are java apps not considered portable ?
Personally, I use Firefox Portable. However, from time-to-time, I am forced to use Internet Explorer when I visit certain sites (government sites are notoriously for this). For that, I used to run a portable IE-based browser (Crazy Browser, if you are interested), but recently, I have been relying on the IE Tab extension to do the job.
A lot of portable apps are also dependent on the IE rendering engine. GreatNews, the unbeatable RSS reader, comes to mind. In fact, the vast majority of Win32 apps that I have come across that renders HTML content in any meaningful way is dependent on IE.
Let's face it: IE _is_ part of the Windows OS, and many Win32 apps do use it, whether it is upload/download via FTP or HTTP, or render web content. Java, on the other hand, is definitely not part of the Windows OS in that sense.
.NET, however, is a different beast, and seems on its ways to becoming part of the OS. I promise you when IE and Microsoft Office are written in managed code, I will add portable .NET apps to the database.