Setting Up Your USB Storage Device as a Portable Application Library - PSTART: the Heart of Portable Apps
(Page 2 of 4 )
PStart is a simple tray tool for starting user-defined applications. You can download it from here and find more information about it here. What's the beauty of this tool? It's simple -- it stores the path of applications dynamically (unlike shortcuts), so you can still run dozens of apps in any other system without depending on the drive letter that the system assigns to your flash drive. You might not realize its usefulness yet, but once you start developing your portable application library you will get that infamous Eureka "aha!-moment."
In this section we'll set up PStart 2.09 (currently the latest version). This is the first step towards building your library because once you've set up PStart you can add other portable applications one by one and set them up individually.
Download and run its executable. A welcome screen appears to greet you and a wizard-like setup will lead through. At the "Setup type" select the "Portable Setup" option. Your portable drive letter will get auto-detected (if not, select manually).
The installation needs 0.7MB and the process is very fast. Once you've installed the tray tool itself (PStart), it will auto-execute but it's empty. You now need to "feed" it with further portable applications and configure it as you desire. Check out the screen shot below, it clearly illustrates what happens if you right click on the white area.
Also, I'd like to point out a few alternatives for PStart: Microsys Launcher and Run!These are application launchers like PStart.
This is enough for now. You'll have enough time to fiddle and play PStart later on while adding your portable applications. Let's move on and hook up your flash drive with dozens of useful apps!
Next: Crucial Portable Applications >>
More Storage Devices Articles
More By Barzan "Tony" Antal
