Portable apps are good. ''Portable apps won't suit everybody's needs or everybody's particular use-cases, and some will even rightly point out that in a *certain* sense they are a step back to a much older way computer programs were handled, but they are a great addition to the options of the world now :-) .'' (''It might be good -- especially as time goes on -- to let some people know that in the computer context, "app" is short for "application", and that both are synonyms for "program" and "software". I may use any of them. And, oh yeah, "folders" and "directories" are synonyms when we're talking about computer file systems, too. Just covering bases, since this is an article that I hope will be useful for some time.'') I've found myself suggesting the portable edition of Thunderbird more than once now, usually tangentially but as something that might prove useful. So now, to make those replies and my workload shorter by replacing all those words with the URL for this article, well, I'm writing this article once and posting it in the Thunderbird support forums. But really, (almost) everything I have to say here applies to portable apps in general, so I expect it can be usefully referenced in many places beyond just Thunderbird's forums. --- You can get Thunderbird Portable and LOTS of other portable apps from <https://portableapps.com>, and do always be sure to update from whichever version they have there to the newest version immediately after installation. Thunderbird Portable (or "Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition") *'''''IS'''''* Thunderbird, just packaged in a way that gives many new advantages. The same goes for all their apps. While they may not have the latest version of a program repackaged as a portable app yet, updating a portable app after you get it is never done any differently than the ways they normally get updated. NOTE: You do NOT have to get or use the PortableApps.com Platform (suite) in order to run their individual portable apps. And they have LOTS more than just Thunderbird and Firefox, LOTS! And their offerings are all free, because they only repackage free, open-source software! There are other sources and makers of portable apps than just <https://portableapps.com> , to be sure. They may do a few things differently, but the definition of a portable app is basically the same. Just search for "What is a Portable App?" using DuckDuckgo.com or your favorite search engine, and you'll get multiple good results. Read more than one for a better overall understanding, but the basics are simple. Much of what I have here will actually repeat some of what you'll find there, but not all. And maybe I'll phrase something better or have an example or use-case that strikes you better; we'll see. What's good about portable apps? They do everything and are used in precisely the same way as non-portable apps, from the user's perspective. Their "installation" is really nothing but unzipping a single directory and all its contents (including any subdirectories); everything needed to run it is in that directory. You copy/move/delete (deleting is uninstalling) the whole program just by copying/moving/deleting the single program directory. This makes it very easy to back up an entire program (including everything you've done to customize it, and any data you don't store outside of its folders). OS drive crash? No reinstallation or configuration worries if you have it backed up; just copy the single program directory from backup. And no worries about a registry or conflicting DLLs or anything like that, when you install or delete; it's self-contained, so installations and deletions are clean. You can move or copy the program to a different location -- even on a flash drive or another computer -- without having to do anything differently; it doesn't care what drive letter it's on at different times and handles that automatically. On a portable drive like a flash drive or SD card, you can take your whole program with all its data, configuration, settings, etc. with you to different computers. (''I actually started using FirefoxPortable and ThunderbirdPortable years ago, when I had a job with a lot of free time at different places each night, each with a computer I could use, and I didn't own or want to buy a laptop or tablet. I carried both on a flash drive, back and forth between my home PC and work. I'd even copy them down to my PC's hard drive for faster speeds when I was at home, then copy back up to the flash drive when I was done or going to leave home. [I haven't seen a web-based e-mail interface I like anywhere near as much as "TB", and have only seen one that was somewhat reasonable for my tastes.] Without having to buy a laptop, and without installing any software on a work computer or harming anything there, I had the same browser and e-mail client at home and at every computer at work -- not just the same "model" of programs, the *very same programs*, just as if I was on the same computer. I didn't bother to get a laptop until years later when a new boss decided we shouldn't use the computers for anything but company business at all; it was a temporary crackdown but long enough to force me to spend more money than a flash drive cost :-) .'') Really, I just treat my *portable* programs like data now, and its great! (''Oh, how I wish my tax software would be available as a portable app! As it is now, I don't update after I send in my taxes, so that if my tax authority ever comes around to ask questions, I can show them the software and say, "This is how the program calculated it right then, what the program said!" without worries that it will do something differently than when I sent in my taxes. But if anything happens that makes me have to reinstall the software from original discs or files again, it will either have to be not-updated-at-all or updated-with-all-the-latest-changes -- and that won't be proof of how the program was doing things when I sent in my taxes. If it were portable, I could back up the whole program and not just the data files!'') You can also even have multiple installations of a single program on the same computer, without any special steps or obstacles! (Although, they may or may not be able to run at the same time, depending on the computer.) ''For instance, on my laptop, instead of using different user profiles within the Firefox web browser for when my roommate has to borrow my laptop -- rarely, but occasionally -- I have my Firefox Portable on my data drive, and a whole other copy of Firefox Portable on my desktop just for them, and I occasionally create a new copy for special projects I want to work on separately from everything else. I've just never dealt with user profiles before, never had to. This is clean and easy for me, and *everything* about each copy of the program is independent and independently configurable. What my roommate does to *their* copy doesn't affect mine, not my history, work in progress, cosmetics, add-ons, nothing. and vice-versa.'' ... This kind of usage does use some more storage space on my drives (be they hard drives or flash drives or SD cards or whatever), but I have that kind of space available now. And in fact, that's what backup copies of my portable apps really are: fully functioning standalone programs. They'll run just the same way. For both Thunderbird and Firefox, I make a copy every time before I allow an update to happen. I shut down the program completely first. I delete the current backup completely, never knowing whether just copying over it will leave behind any extra things that might cause problems. And then I make a fresh copy of my "in-use" folder, using the same name with "-- BACKUP COPY" appended. Clever huh? Only after that is done will I update my in-use copy of the program. Then if any functionality -- built-in or add-on -- has broken or changed in a way I don't like with the update, I just delete the "in-use" copy and replace it with a copy of the backup. That's why I started keeping the backups, in fact. [Note: I would still have to deal with anything I'd done in a program since updating, like keeping newly downloaded mail or bookmarks or history, or whatever else. But hopefully, I see any major problem right away.] At that point, they're identical, and I could run either one if I wanted. Need something I permanently deleted from my POP3 Thunderbird account, for instance? If it was there at the time of my last backup copy, I just close Thunderbird ("in-use" copy), open Thunderbird (backup copy), and get it. Simple. If you find yourself wanting to test multiple configurations, or uninstalling and reinstalling particular software a lot, or trying to troubleshoot problems based on different set-ups, consider using the portable version of the same program if there is one. Portable apps are good. ~ And that looks like a good end to a basic article. Have a blessed life! ~