Apps that work well on USB 1.1 and 2

[MasterGoodheart]

I know for the most part PCs have USB 2 these days, but often public internet places have fairly old PCs (here anyway) with only USB 1.1. I also have 2 older PCs with it. So I've been trying to either replace the apps that run slowly on it with leaner ones or have them alongside my current ones if I like them.
I've been having trouble finding the best portable apps in general too (I have a really small download limit which doesn't help me being able to try them) so I don't have heaps ATM but I'm working on it.

Suggestions would be really appretiated (whenever I put a ":?:" is where I would like some help deciding)
This is my list:

Docement Editing: Abiword Portable
IRC: KVIrc on USB 2, HydraIRC on USB 1.1
Archiving: 7zip
Anti-Virus: ClamWin Portable. It runs a bit slowly on USB 1.1 but still ok.
FTP: Filezilla Portable.
Media Playing: VLC Portable. Its way too slow for me on USB 1.1 so I'm looking for a faster one.
Torrent: uTorrent
Browser: Really looking for suggestions on this, since the downloads are fairly big for both Portable Firefox and K-Meleon (the ones I want to try).
Webserver: XAMPP. Soon I'm going to copy it to my harddrive and replace with a 'small' one, although its hard to choose the best one.
Launcher: Asuite 1.4
Text Editor: Not sure which one to try (I think Notepad ++ looks good though)
IM: I just use www.meebo.com, works well for me.
CD/DVD Burning: Looking into ImgBurn, Active@ ISO Burner (since I burn drive images like live CDs a lot), and DP CD DVD Burner.
As well as lots of misc. little apps that do various things.
Any programs that aren't in these sections but you think I might find useful please feel free to say.

The reason I say things like "looking into' and such is because my internet connection is very unreliable. While i'm typing this only google sites, portableapps, portablefreeware, sourceforge sites, and a couple of others are working. So I haven't been able to download many lately.

So as much stuff you all can recommend the better, since it means less downloads on my 1GB a month limit (which is shared by the whole family...on a wireless LAN).

[Andrew Lee]

Media Playing: VLC Portable. Its way too slow for me on USB 1.1 so I'm looking for a faster one.

Personally, I use MPUI, since it is able to play most RM files, which VLC does not.

Text Editor: Not sure which one to try (I think Notepad ++ looks good though)

PSPad is my choice for this.

[MasterGoodheart]

Thanks Andrew!

Got PSPad, looks pretty cool. I did try Notepad ++ which I liked but this one seems better.

Now, I downloaded the MPUI package without MPlayer (since I'd have to download the latest one anyway). Could you give me a link to the latest MPlayer version and extra codecs? I need a ZIP link if its over 4 MBs...

Or are they these links?:
http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releas ... 1.0rc1.zip
http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releas ... 061022.zip

I did find this: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=112365
Seems to be a frequently updated full download with the latest version of MPUI, MPlayer, and codecs. But...its a 17 MB exe

[Andrew Lee]

Or are they these links?:
http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releas ... 1.0rc1.zip
http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releas ... 061022.zip

Yeah, those should work.

[MasterGoodheart]

Thanks.

Seems pretty cool! Really fast to load compared to VLC. But....it doesn't seem to handle DVDs very well, which is a shame.

I'm going to try KMPlayer for that, since it seems to be more focused for it.

I also tried XMPlayer for music, best portable music player I've tried. Really fast for so many features.

BTW, is it possible in PSPad to have the tags in HTML expand and contract like in Notepad ++?

[Andrew Lee]

BTW, is it possible in PSPad to have the tags in HTML expand and contract like in Notepad ++?

Nah, that's one of the neat things that Notepad++ does very well. But I didn't find myself using it much (guess it's my pattern of usage), so I slowly gravitated towards PSPad.

[calm_observer]

I know for the most part PCs have USB 2 these days, but...

i move the app to a temp area on the harddisk to execute, and then update the data on the flash when done. i've been using auotit to automate the task ~ works well

[MasterGoodheart]

i move the app to a temp area on the harddisk to execute, and then update the data on the flash when done. i've been using auotit to automate the task ~ works well

yeah that does work...although it can take some time to copy back onto the flash drive again if you copy the whole folder (it'd work fairly well if you have some sort of sync thing which you probably have).

[calm_observer]

i move the app to a temp area on the harddisk to execute, and then update the data on the flash when done. i've been using auotit to automate the task ~ works well

yeah that does work...although it can take some time to copy back onto the flash drive again if you copy the whole folder (it'd work fairly well if you have some sort of sync thing which you probably have).

i seperate all my data for my apps into a mirrored folder tree, compress the whole thing and write to the flash when done. i supose if the data got large > 1MB it could be a problem, but remember 1MB of 7z compressed data will handle alot of app's setup data. the thing about flash is that it is very slow to write to especially if you are writing a bunch of files. i have found writing one big file is much faster.

what makes it work is having it automated. if i had to open compression utility to do it by hand then i think it would be a drag. also i can handle alot of things that many of the so called 'portable apps' do not. for example; updating paths in the folder history of my file manager.

[MasterGoodheart]

Ahh I see.

Yes multiple write speeds in flash drives just suck. You can really see how bad they are by extracting something like the Simple Machines Forum into a folder and copying it to your drive. IIRC extracted its about about 6.6 MBs. It takes AGES to copy to a flash drive even if you are using USB 2. Then try zipping it without any compression and copying it again. It takes only a few seconds to copy a singe 7 MB file to my flash drive through USB 1.1.

(BTW if you'd like to send me some info on your system my email is
master(.)goodheart(@)gmail(.)com
just remove the "()"