The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

NOTE: Since its 1.19 release in 2018 Mendeley encrypts its local database using a proprietary algorithm, making it difficult for users to export their data from the application and possibly creating a vendor lock-in situation. (source)

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This one has been a bit of a disappointment over time -- I joined Mendeley almost at inception and had it figured destined to be the killer application of the research world, especially after the inglorious demise of Procite (superseded by a largely inferior EndNote; anyone still remembers Procite?). Four years later, it is multiplatform and well regarded, but it still doesn't sport an official Windows portable version, despite many promises and workarounds. Instead they kept pushing cloud services to a small(ish) group of unwilling users. I gave up on it already but it might be of interest to others...



Download at http://www.mendeley.com/download-mendeley-desktop/

How does Zotero sit with those? It's a Firefox plugin, so it's at least somewhat portable:
http://www.zotero.org/download/

> Four years later, it is multiplatform and well regarded, but it still doesn't sport an official Windows portable version, despite many promises and workarounds.

Sounds very annoying.

webfork wrote:How does Zotero sit with those? It's a Firefox plugin, so it's at least somewhat portable

They anticipated that question: http://www.mendeley.com/compare-mendeley/

In my experience, Zotero is a real workhorse but also a royal PitA to work with in anything but large screens...

webfork wrote:Sounds very annoying.

It is.

BTW, changelog is @ http://www.mendeley.com/release-notes/

I used Mendeley Desktop a few years ago. I remember it worked nice with JauntePE.

joby_toss wrote:I remember it worked nice with JauntePE.

Do you happen to have that launcher laying around? It would make the present topic really worthwhile...

Sorry, I don't have it anymore...
But I'll try to recreate it.

Mendeley Desktop is not a portable app at the time being. It does use the computer to store files such as the library database and also requires a connection to the internet to work to its fullest capabilities.
However, if you look up USB drive or portable app on Mendeley's support portal, you'll find there is some ways to go portable (or at least semi-portable). For example: http://support.mendeley.com/customer/po ... mory-stick

We have an official mobile app for iOS devices and there are third party apps for Android such as Droideley. So, you can have your library with you at all times.

Disclaimer: I'm a community liaison with Mendeley (and also a happy user or Mendeley for the past 3+ years!)

Thanks for joining, rvidal, it's always gratifying to see developers (or their representatives) taking interest in our little chat...

webfork wrote:How does Zotero sit with those? It's a Firefox plugin, so it's at least somewhat portable: http://www.zotero.org/download/

Found this (may already be outdated, latest Mendeley version is 1.7.1): http://nakhmani.wordpress.com/2011/02/0 ... omparison/

On a related note, I also found payware Citavi (http://www.citavi.com/), costing € ~120 and claiming to be portable (see http://manual.citavi.com/en/installing_ ... _drive.htm); naturally, I haven't tested it. Here's a screenshot:

And then there's this:
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsc ... -elsevier/

The rumour that Elsevier is buying Mendeley has been greeted with a mixture of horror, anger, peppered with a few congratulations, I told you so’s, and touting for new customers

IMHO, the refusal to have a portable version is (a tiny) part of the picture...

Hi
mendeley is very useful...first if someone hasn't made a portable then there is a way to do it...have you all heard of cameyo it is a free portabilizer...well the way it works is it sandboxes the installation process of the program you want to make portable when you install it in your desktop system and then makes a portable copy that works well. I have a portable mendeley it's 110 mb in size and it takes everything with you not sure if it's stealth.
I'm sure you lot could possibly shrink that down and check out it's stealth capabilities . .......one other thing is there a time limit on how long you stay registered without chatting before your login and everything gets deleted ....I had to re-register to reply to this post.....I'm not very chatty Iknow i registered in sep 2011 and today I don't exist...re-registered same details and heer is mycontribution see you all in another year or maybe earlier.....dissertation at the moment

Cameyo's legal status is not well defined. The dodged my license question twice before on these forums.
At the moment I am convinced that some of the packages they redistribute (in a modified form) are illegal. It might be a good virtualizing application (I still believe it's not yet), but if they break even one software license, they shouldn't be even mentioned on these forums!

P.S. I continue here.

potbic wrote: .......one other thing is there a time limit on how long you stay registered without chatting before your login and everything gets deleted ....I had to re-register to reply to this post.....I'm not very chatty Iknow i registered in sep 2011 and today I don't exist...re-registered same details and heer is mycontribution see you all in another year or maybe earlier.....dissertation at the moment

See http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... 247#p59247.

Some news regarding the subject, so I guess an update is in order.

Mendeley has been acquired by Elsevier sometime ago, so the rumors reported previously were fully justified. Apart from that, nothing really changed concerning the portability of Mendeley Desktop.

EDIT: It has just come to my attention that Mendeley is also available for MacOS, IOS, and Linux, but not Android -- e.g., for Debian/Ubuntu, see http://www.mendeley.com/download-mendel ... tructions/.

A rather interesting alternative has been posted here at TPFC, Zotero Standalone Portable: http://www.portablefreeware.com/forums/ ... hp?t=20624, which basically creates a portable XULrunner/Mozilla Prism application for Zotero.

Also deserving to be noted is the new Docear (http://www.docear.org/), a Java based entry built on the Freeplane mind-mapping software; it might be possible to make work it with jPortable, but I don't do Java so I wouldn't know. There are no screenshots at the site, but a video preview can be watched at http://youtu.be/ijU5BbbrZ_Y.

Docear is portable... just download the zip-file and unzip to desired location.

Greets