The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

http://www.newtrics.com/downloads.html

this software claims to be "maybe" portable:

In some cases you may also use it on your flash-drive...

well, it writes more than 260 values in the registry...

Hello,

ContaStic is a Windows application that uses Filemaker(c) as it's base to work and can be independent from PC to PC (Windows). It can work on it's own whether it is on a flash drive, external hard drive, or other portable (writable) drive as long as the drive is plugged into a Windows PC.

How to? After installing ContaStic to the default location (C:\Program Files\ContaStic\), copying the ContaStic folder to any removable & writable drive will make it portable (if plugged in PC) and anything changed from within the application will be permanent. (Note: there is no sync function to do from portable drive to PC)

The only drawback with ContaStic is that the backup feature only backs-up in the default installation path (C:\Program Files\ContaStic\backup). All other features should work.

I hope this makes things a bit more clear

Andreas M. (developer)

As AlephX rightly noted, ContaStic writes tons of entires to the registry - by no means portable...

Hello,

"Portable" can have a few meanings...

Try answer the following questions as "Yes" or "No" to project some facts:

1. Does the application work when used on a removable drive ?

2. Does the application require any additional software when used on a removable drive ?

3. Does the application work when plugged into multiple Windows systems on a removable drive ?

If the above questions have been answered "Yes", then this application
takes one of the few "Portable" meanings. If not, it could be one of the
rare cases.

At the end, the user has the final choice whether an application is
portable or not...

Regards,
Andreas

ContaStic saves the user's preferences to the registry, among the hundreds of other settings it saves there. Although it may independently run on different machines from a removable drive, ContaStic forces the user to set his preferences on each of these different machines. This preferences' constraint alone is sufficient to justifiably challenge it being labeled "portable."


--Gary

I see your point Gary -it's quite true, but I must say this would be of little affect since ContaStic
is based on FileMaker(c) and the only user preferences that can be changed are those
of the FileMaker's general tool-bar/menu options which do not actually affect the application.
The user never really needs to make any changes because the important settings are set
when the user enters the application and has nothing to do with the registry,
but the actual data file itself (Contastic.sts).

Of course this does not change what you specified as not being portable and I can understand that.
It's just a clarification between the FileMaker environment and its underlying applications,
slightly similar to how MS Access(c) works.


Andreas