If you want to dedicate your PC fully to audio processing, and keep it as clean as possible, you may want to consider using portable applications, instead of installed applications for your additional non-audio related needs (Web browsing, PDF viewer, etc.). A portable application is a program that does not need to be installed and is designed to read and write its configuration settings into an accessible folder in the computer, usually in the folder where the portable application can be found.
Many modern applications are offered as portable versions, besides installers:
To run a portable application, you normally download the ZIP archive, unzip it to a folder on your drive, and run the main executable.
To maintain a clean Windows environment focused on audio processing for live performance, we recommended that you uninstall all UWP apps that you do not use, as already described in chapter Control what is running in the background. There are several reasons for this:
•Speed – UWP apps seem to be slower than installed or portable ones,
•Reliability – users experienced lots of problems where UWP apps were failing, and not one or two, but all UWP apps except Edge,
•Functionality – installed or portable applications seems to be more feature-rich, and nice-looking compared to UWP apps.
Using portable applications bring many benefits if you want to create a stable and fully optimized PC as a platform focused for real-time audio processing:
•Application traces – portable applications do not write to the Windows registry nor store their configuration files in the user's profile; instead, they store their configuration files in the portable directory. This way you make sure that your PC stays clean and there are not unwanted traces in the registry, and any leftovers in Program Files, ProgramData or other folders on your drive.
•Easier to control – portable applications do not set scheduled tasks, install Windows services, or set themselves to run automatically when Windows starts (although some portable applications might also provide these features).
•Portability – as they do not need to be installed, portable applications can run from your thumb drive; you can insert your thumb drive into other computers or laptops, and they will run normally, as well. If you are a musician that is often on tour and you use different computers or laptops, you can save all your applications’ preferences and ensure the same user experience across many PCs.
You can download many portable applications from web sites like portableapps.com or portablefreeware.com.
The PortableApps.com also provides a platform which enables you to select and install more than 400 free and portable applications, organized in categories:
This platform can also automatically update your applications, such as Thunderbird or Libre Office.
