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Imagine carrying your favorite software, settings, profiles and data on a device that can fit your key chain. It is possible with portable software - computer programs that can be carried around with you on portable device and used on any Windows computer. When your flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod or other device is plugged in, you have access to your favorite software and personal data just as you would do on your own PC. You can work, play a game, message friends, send email, edit photos and more - all without worrying if applications are installed on the computer. Not all software can be portable. It needs to comply with the following requirements.

There are two major media types used for the portable software: а portable hard drive device and a flash drive. The main advantage of a hard drive is its low cost per megabyte, so a portable 20 Gb hard drive can cost the same as 2Gb flash one. However, а portable hard drive has moving parts, and a good bump or drop from a few feet can damage it. A flash drive uses flash memory, which means that information is stored in a memory circuit, and there are no moving parts in it. You can drop it and be sure it would be fine. Also it is usually much smaller than a hard drive. However, keep in mind that flash memory can sustain only a limited number of write and erase cycles before failure. Thus, an active everyday usage of the flash memory can result in a card lifetime of 1-2 years. If your flash drive is 1- or 2-years old, consider buying a new one. Also, there are some programs configured to place temporary or intermediate files in memory rather than store them temporarily on the flash drive, that reduce the flash memory usage.

Recently a new type of flash drives appeared, that is specially designed for the portable software. They are coming preinstalled with the Launchpad which emulates the Windows OS start menu, and controls program installation and two partitions - one for the launch menu, and one for the programs and data. While such portable drive is highly attractive, one of the downsides of it is that most of the software for it is commercial. The best way to fill your portable drive with the best tools is to look for a portable versions of your favorite software. Everyone has its own tastes in making their collection. The following freeware tools are a pretty common choice.

Launch your portable programs from a simple menu

PStart is a simple tray tool to start user defined applications. Designed to run portable applications (like portable Firefox & Thunderbird), it can start anything runnable from USB key devices or removable disks: www.pegtop.net

Protect information on your flash drive with encrypting tools

Dekart Private Disk Light. This free disk encryption software creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk. All data encryption is fast, automatic, on-the-fly and with no performance penalty: www.dekart.com

TrueCrypt. You can create a virtual drive of any size you choose that contains all your private data and information. You can use it to encrypt your entire USB drive or only a segment of it if you prefer: www.truecrypt.org

Carry your web browser with all your favorite bookmarks

Opera Portable - Opera browser that has been repacked so that you can run Opera by just clicking, without the need of installation or administrator rights. With download size of about 3 MB, you get the same features of Opera compared to what you get in the installation version: www.kejut.com/operaportable

Portable Firefox is the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser packaged with a PortableApps Launcher as a portable app, so you can take your bookmarks, extensions and saved passwords with you: www.portableapps.com/apps/internet/browsers/portable_firefox

Carry your calendar with all your appointments

Portable Sunbird is the handy Mozilla Sunbird calendar and task manager packaged as a portable app, so you can take your calendar and to do list with you: www.portableapps.com/apps/office/organization/portable_sunbird

Essential Pim performs all your basic PIM needs: calendar, contact manager, etc. Conveniently, you can import your Outlook information, and it supports built-in encryption: www.essentialpim.com

Carry your email client with all your contacts and settings

Mozilla Thunderbird Portable is the popular Mozilla Thunderbird email client packaged as a portable app, so you can take your email, address book and account settings with you. You can also get it with GPG and Enigmail preconfigured to encrypt and sign your email: www.portableapps.com/apps/internet/email/portable_thunderbird

JBMail is a compact and portable secure e-mail client. The software has been designed for simplicity, security and “on-line mailbox access” meaning that mail is manipulated remotely and NOT stored locally. JBMail supports POP3, SMTP, SSL/TLS and all essential mail client features: www.pc-tools.net/win32/jbmail

Carry your instant messenger and your buddy list

Trillian multi-protocol instant messaging client works with AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ and IRC: www.trilliananywhere.com

Miranda IM is a multi protocol instant messenger client for Windows. Miranda IM uses very little memory and is extremely fast. It supports ICQ, AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, IRC and more: www.portableapps.com/apps/internet/chat/portable_miranda

Carry your whole office suite along with your documents and presentations

AbiWord Portable. AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft Word. It is suitable for a variety of word processing activities and has the ability to read and write a number of document types including Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, OpenOffice.org, RTF, HTML, Palm and more: www.portableapps.com/apps/office/word_processors/portable_abiword

Portable OpenOffice is the complete OpenOffice.org office suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database packaged as a portable app. the only downside is its size (86mb to download and 167mb to install): www.portableapps.com/apps/office/suites/portable_openoffice

Carry all your important passwords and account information securely

PINs is a free feature-rich Windows program for safe and comfortable storing of any secure information like passwords, accounts, PINs etc. PINs uses a secure 448 bit Blowfish algorithm to ensure the data are not crackable. The password used for securing access to stored data is not saved anywhere: www.mirekw.com

KeePass is a free/open-source password manager or safe which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key-disk. So you only have to remember one single master password or insert the key-disk to unlock the whole database: keepass.sourceforge.net

Have utilities handy when visiting family or friends that are having PC problems

Portable ClamWin is the popular ClamWin antivirus packaged as a portable app, so you can take your antivirus with you to scan files on the go. Portable ClamWin has scheduled scans and updates disabled as they are not used in a portable scenario: www.portableapps.com/apps/utilities/antivirus/portable_clamwin

Handy Recovery is data recovery software designed to restore accidentally deleted files on hard and floppy drives with FAT12/16/32, NTFS and NTFS 5 file systems: www.handyrecovery.com

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Good backup habits are essential to everyone who uses a computer with important information. It takes just a few accidental clicks of the mouse - or worse, one isolated hardware failure - and valuable data can be lost.

One dilemma for backup users is often where to put their backups. Storing them on your own hard drive is obviously not the best option. Not everyone wants to split their backups into several parts using a CD or DVD burner, and an external hard drive isn’t a standard fixture on many users’ desks.

Offsite backup over a network:

Most backup programs support network backup, and the way to use this is simple. Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wide Area Networks (WAN) usually feature “network drives”, which appear to your computer as an ordinary drive. They often have names like M:, N:, O: and so on. Depending on permissions set up by the people administrating your network, you may be able to write to certain drives but not read from them, or you may not be able to change or delete data once it’s written. These are common situations, but they should not affect the way you back up.

Once you have found a suitable location for your data - your administrator will be able to help you with this - backing up can be as easy and fast as with an external drive. Select the appropriate drive and the data you want to save and that’s it. Even though a network connection is usually not as fast as a local cable, this is just a matter of waiting. Most programs allow you to set a backup timetable, which is a great way to take the effort out of backup. If you leave your computer on at night, then setting an incremental backup every second day at 2am, for example, ensures the safety of your data. A possible disadvantage here is that if your network goes down, you might not be able to get your data back for some time. Laptop users might not always be connected to the network at the scheduled backup time, defeating the purpose entirely.

Offsite backup through FTP:

Another form of offsite backup uses a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server over the Internet. FTP is traditionally used to move large files online and can reliably transfer any files of any size.

To access data stored on an FTP server, you can use your backup program, a special FTP client or just a regular web browser. While there are two “types” of FTP server, public and private, you will almost certainly be using a private server, which requires a password to access your data. Advantages of this method include that you can view the files stored on the FTP any time you wish using any FTP client, mobile users can back up from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection, and FTP backup can be somewhat cheaper than a specialised remote backup service.

The main disadvantage inherent in this method is data security. The FTP protocol is not secure, and even a private FTP account does not ensure the security of your files; it only protects access to the FTP server. Anyone with access to your username and password has access to your data. Added to this, unless you take steps to protect it, your data will be unencrypted as it travels to the FTP server, and could possibly be intercepted. We recommend that you encrypt your files before sending them.

One option is to store your data in a standard password-protected ZIP archive. This is a quick method that allows you to extract your files on any computer using any ZIP client. There are ZIP programs that provide tighter security by applying stronger encryption algorithms, like AES or Blowfish. This increases the security of your data, but to decrypt your files you may need to use the program that encrypted and backed them up.

To obtain access to a private FTP server, find a good hosting company (try searching with Google) and compare based on price and location - companies with servers based in your country will usually be faster. Beware that your Internet Service Provider (ISP) might charge you for the data you send, so you may wish to make incremental backups over FTP, which only backup what was changed since your last backup.

Specialised offsite backup:

Another form of offsite backup is the use of a special server provided by the company that makes your backup solution. They usually use their own protocols to encrypt and transfer your data, and a special program on their end to store it. You may have some issues using such services if you’re behind a firewall, as some of these services use non-standard Internet Protocol (IP) ports.

Offsite backup services are usually paid for by the month, by the amount of data transferred or both. They can be quite expensive, especially if you wish to back up a lot of data, or use the service over a long period of time. As with FTP servers, you may also be charged by your ISP to send your data.

SoftwareTalks Podcast
(Time 6:46 min; File Size 5.43 Mb)

Almost everyone with an e-mail account has experienced unsolicited commercial e-mail, or ’spam’ - and everyone knows how irritating it can be. Every day we can read about new breakthroughs in anti-spam technology, or another successful prosecution against spam senders located in the United States and Europe.

The running rate for sending around a million spam e-mails now is around US$200. Given that most spam senders are hawking high margin get-rich-quick or impossibly hopeful lose-weight-quick schemes, it takes less than a 0.01% “hit rate” to make a lot of money.

Regardless of how successful spam is for the senders, the fact is that most users dislike it, and want it to stop. The fight against spam, from the user’s point of view, revolves around two solutions: server side and client side filtering. Each has unique advantages and disadvantages.

Server side filtering works from a central server, usually connected to several spam ‘blacklists’ (these lists identify known spam senders) and also analyzes each e-mail based on its individual characteristics. The ability to pool knowledge from analysis of millions of messages can help the accuracy of these systems. The “Report Spam” button on your web mail service is a good example of how spam is eliminated democratically.

Another benefit of server side filtering is traffic economy. When spam messages are caught before they are received, users and service providers do not pay for their delivery. However, server side filtering is not perfect. There is the real threat of “false positives” - genuine e-mails from friends or colleagues identified as spam, and not delivered as a result. Server filters often can’t deliver suspected spam to a special folder that you can look through later. Some servers can also be overzealous in their blacklisting techniques, and block whole Internet Service Providers (ISPs) while a spam outbreak is happening. Every user might find himself unable to send legitimate e-mail and the recipients usually aren’t aware that their e-mail provider, or ISP, is using spam technology that blocks the sender.

Finally, server side filtering can lack the ability to approve certain kinds of e-mails (like newsletters from companies in which you’re interested). You might make a purchase at an online shop and never receive the receipt, lost forever in a spam filter.

Main advantages of server filtering:

- Traffic economy through interception of messages earlier in the delivery chain;
- Spam filtering is based on the analysis of many messages hitting many server users at once, potentially increasing accuracy.

Spam is annoying, but being unable to send an e-mail to a loved one because it’s wrongly identified as spam is much worse. Even though most of our e-mail will pass through a server spam filter somewhere on its journey, server filters suffer from a need to be over-cautious about designating a message as spam, lest this decision be incorrect.

Therein lies the benefit of client side filtering. This technology works in a similar way as described above, except that the work is done by a program on the user’s own PC. Client filters usually depend less on blacklists and more on sophisticated detection methods that search through each e-mail. It’s usually possible to customize the strength of the spam filter, and approve or disapprove of specific senders and domains, be they relatives, friends or industry newsletters. Client filters also deliver spam to special e-mail folders that a user can browse through every so often, to check if any mail has been misidentified.

Main advantages of client filtering:

- Most programs include a folder containing messages thought to be spam, to prevent loss of your messages;
- Wide range of personal settings, such as which senders will always be delivered, which sites may not send you e-mail, and how strong you want your spam filtering to be;
- You are in control of your own spam filtering.

The challenges for all spam filters, no matter what the technology, are huge. For example, on the client side, the better our spam filter gets, the less we tend to check our spam folders, thus increasing the risk of false positives.

SoftwareTalks Podcast
(Time 6:11 min; File Size 4.96 Mb)

There have always been scams. Get-rich-quick letters, pyramid schemes, fake competitions, charities that don’t exist. The Internet hasn’t increased the chance of falling prey to scammers - it just makes it easier for the scammers to get your attention. The tools available to senders of disreputable e-mail are extensive and cheap. Spam is illegal in many countries but we still get a lot of it. The same goes for the scams that arrive in our inbox.

When I use my online banking service, I’m faced with no less than three separate warnings to ignore any e-mails claming to be from my bank. At the same time I receive genuine e-mails from my bank, which themselves tell me to ignore e-mails from the bank. Another example is eBay, the popular web auction site. There was a time when eBay sent me regular e-mails about my account and the progress of my auctions. Now eBay urges their users to use an internal messaging system, akin to e-mails that only work when you’re using the site, to communicate with the company. It’s less convenient, but it is safer.

SoftwareTalks Podcast
(Time 5:33 min; File Size 3.8 Mb)

Let’s get to the important part first - if you’ve just lost your data, skip past this introduction and go directly to our first tip, so you can start your rescue operation. If not, a few minutes spent now might help you a lot in the future. Pay special attention to our third tip.

These handy tips will help you stay confident in the face of data loss, no matter how it occurs.

Tip #1: Use your system as little as possible until you recover all of your lost files. The more activity taking place on your hard disk, the greater the chance that some of your lost data might be written over.

- Don’t copy any files to the disk containing your lost data;
- Avoid browsing the web, because your web browser saves cache files on the disk;
- Don’t launch any unnecessary programs, because they can also use your disk;
- Don’t restart your computer.

Tip #2: Before you go further, take steps to free up some space on the disk containing your lost files. The more free space your system has, the less chance of overwriting any lost files with new ones. You can do one or more of the following things.

- Delete old files that you don’t need anymore (you can also move them to another source, like a USB flash drive, instead of deleting);
- Empty your Recycle Bin - making sure that you haven’t put any important files in there by mistake;
- Empty your browser cache. For Internet Explorer, click on the “Tools” menu, then select “Internet Options”. Then, on the “General” tab, click the “Delete Files…” button.

Tip #3: To install any software after data damage increases the risk of your data being overwritten, so if you haven’t had any data problems yet, consider installing a data recovery program just in case. Prevention is always better than cure, and a recovery program is good insurance for your data. However, if you don’t yet have a recovery program, find one and - if possible - avoid installing it to the disk where your lost files are located.

Most recovery programs work fairly similarly. You need to select the disk where the lost files are located, let the program analyze the content of the disk - this can take a while - and then select the file you want to recover. Then, provide a location where you want to save that file. You should try to avoid recovering files to the same disk. You could use another hard drive, a network or removable media like a floppy disk or USB flash drive.

After you recover your files, check that they are correct. If you’ve recovered applications, check that they still run, or if you’ve recovered documents, check that your words are still there. Even the best recovery software can’t guarantee 100% results. If some parts of your files were overwritten - meaning that other data was saved to their location on your disk - after recovery they might contain invalid information. Depending on the type of file involved, partially recovered files like this can be mended by special utilities.

SoftwareTalks Podcast
(Time 3:49 min; File Size 3.07Mb)

There are a number of media types available to most computer users for their backup purposes. Many businesses use magneto-optical or large-capacity tape drives for their daily and weekly backups. With very high capacities, these drives are technically impressive, but the media is usually very expensive. The common backup media for home and office includes CD/DVD discs, dedicated internal drives and external hard drives that exist in capacities over one terabyte (1TB) with fast Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 interfaces. Companies like Iomega found little home market success with smaller drives such as the Jaz (1-2GB) and Rev (35GB) series.

Where cost is a priority, a better option for home and small business users is often disc spanning, where cheap blank media can be used to the same effect as a tape or a dedicated drive. The benefits in cost of disc spanning are easily measurable. For a 20GB backup set the cost per gigabyte (CPG) will be as cheap as 33c for a DVD-RW disc, compared with up to $6 per gigabyte for an external hard drive of comparable size. Even for a larger backup of 250GB the optimal cost per gigabyte for external hard drive will be around 80 cents, still twice more than for a DVD-RW disc. A large internal drive can have a similar cost to a DVD-RW disc, but unless you make enough backup sets to fill it, your excess disk space is effectively wasted. In this sense, disc spanning is an attractive and economical option.

This table summarizes the cost per gigabyte for different types of storage media and various backup sets.

Moreover, disc spanning is simple. All you need is to choose the files, obtain some blank discs, and a good backup program will inform you of the total size, and how many media units are required for backup. Since a CD/DVD writing drive became a part of a basic PC configuration, you don’t need to fiddle around switching external devices, adding hard discs, installing drivers and playing other “hardware games”. The ability to store your backups on discs offsite is also a major advantage.

Not only is disc spanning a cheap, simple and flexible backup method, but it is also one of the most reliable backup forms today. Modern optical storage media has a shelf life of at least 30 years and some manufacturers even offer 100 year guarantees. Compared to an average lifespan of 5-7 years for hard drives and up to 20 years for a magnetic tape, optical discs are very long-lived. Disc spanning makes it possible that our backups will outlive ourselves.

Finally, this backup method continues to gain popularity as technology develops. Next-generation forms of blue-laser discs using organic dyes, such as the Sony Blu-ray format (between 23GB and 54GB) and Toshiba’s HD-DVD, will further reduce the cost of removable media, meaning that inexpensive and simple backups are within the reach of everyone.

SoftwareTalks Podcast
(Time 4:05 min; File Size 3.2Mb)

Basically, if you are making an image mosaic, you need to remember a pair of important rules:

Rule 1: The page load time increases together with the number of page elements, even if their total size remains the same.

Rule 2: However, merging page elements will lead to a longer wait until your visitor sees the first portion of your webpage. You need to keep a balance.

In designing a webpage, you have to set priorities. Is your goal a fast browsing experience or maximum visual impact? Will your customers wait for long enough or will they go elsewhere?

Web designers using graphical navigation have many choices - to include graphics and text, to just work from one large image with several navigation elements, or to load many small ones. The latter is a popular method today, but can lead to slow access times. This slowdown is particularly noticeable on dialup connections, but because server requests are less affected by download speed, if you have a bottleneck in this area it can affect all of your users.

Let us examine the server request process:

Step 1: User clicks a link, and the browser sends an HTTP request to the server;
Step 2: The request goes through Internet hosts and routers, and then reaches the server;
Step 3: The server processes the request and sends the HTTP response and data back;
Step 4: The response goes through the Internet, usually on a different route, and then reaches the browser and the element rendered by your browser, and displayed on your screen.

How can you calculate the effect of this complex process on the customer experience? There are two main factors involved: the “Internet latency time” and the “HTTP request“.

The typical minimum size of an HTTP request is 256 bytes. This means that when browsers request an image of one byte in size, the browser needs to send a 256 byte HTTP request on both of its server connections, and the server has to send back an HTTP response of the same size, along with the one byte of content. You can use the following formula when calculating the contribution of HTTP request delays:

HTTP Time Loss = (4 kilobits) * Elements / Bandwidth in kilobits per second

In essence this means that on a regular website, where the number of page elements is between 10 and 30, HTTP overheads will add significantly to your load time. For example, in a page with 50 elements, and a 56kbps connection speed, 3.57 seconds of page load time is wasted. Let’s say the page size is 100KB. It means that the ‘expected load time’ is 14.28 seconds but actual time is 25% greater.

Internet latency time involves how the packet (request) gets to the server and back (steps 2 and 4). The amount of time this journey takes is known as “ping time”. The shortest possible ping time to the other side of the world is 85 milliseconds. That is because 85ms is the time the electrical signal needs to travel to the other side and back in a straight line through the Earth. Of course, the shortest possible ping across the world is 133ms, as we cannot cut through the Earth. In practice on overseas websites, the actual ping is often higher, over 300ms not being unusual. To local sites inside the USA and Europe, typical ping time can be 100ms or lower (Source: http://www.internettrafficreport.com).

Internet latency time loss = Elements * (PING in milliseconds / 1000) / 2
In the above formula, “2″ is the necessary correction factor given that browsers usually make more than one connection to the server.

It is possible to incorporate ping delay time and HTTP header request delays, described above, into a final formula:

Total loss of time = Elements * (4 kilobits / Bandwidth + PING / 2000)

Despite the growing penetration of broadband in the world - according to Nielsen NetRatings, over 60% of US households and 85% of US work users are now broadband equipped - many users still suffer from slow page load time. This can drive users away and does not encourage return visits.

Remember that just decreasing the size of the smaller images on your site doesn’t help significantly if they are already less than 500 bytes. Try to decrease the number of images by combining them into one or more large images. You can use image maps for this purpose, which work from the position of the mouse on the image, and are a good way of cutting down on the problems caused by fragmented images.

SoftwareTalks Podcast
(Time 6:28 min; File Size 4.45Mb)

About the Authors:

Jonathan Tunn is a staff writer for SoftLogica covering personal technology. He studied Journalism at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, and acquired his IT background at a transnational telecommunications company.

Alexander Grasmik is a marketing manager for SoftLogica. He specializes in web development and performance testing with 4 years of experience on board.