Possibility of running Xara off of a flash or other portable drive?

[LEC]

I love working with Xara and I'm building a number of websites and logos for small projects now. This forum has been great as I've been learning, so here's, perhaps, a tougher question.

I have a 'real' job for which I have to travel. I have a company laptop that won't allow me to install outside software, so I can't take Xara with me when I travel (and too cumbersome to carry 2 computers). I would love to be able, at least, to do simple vector drawing in layers during travel. So I am wondering if it's possible to run Xara, or another pared-down program such as Webster, straight from a USB flash drive? I really just want to draw - I can sacrifice the advanced features when I'm away from the home office.

Specifically, I'd love to be able to carry Xara with me. Short of that, can anyone recommend a really lightweight vector drawing application that would work from a portable drive? Or, it occurs to me, maybe an investment in a portable hard drive is the thing here?

Any suggestions would be MOST WELCOME!!

[gwpriester]

I think the best way to find out is to try it.

I suspect you can do this but I am not sure. Check back as one of the members will certainly have a more definitive and less vague answer than mine.

[Soquili]

Xara Designer, Photo & Graphic Designer, and Web Designer all require entries in the Windows Registry as well as data in specific folders on the hard drive. All that means current versions of the applications must be installed rather than run independently from a portable drive.

[LEC]

Thank you. I suspected that the registry issues might be there. I've never used Webster (what I think is Xara's lighter sibling), but do you know if the registry is an issue with it, as well?

Again, thank you for your thoughts on this.

[Soquili]

If my old memory is working correctly, Webster also requires registry entries.

[gwpriester]

A Xara User from down under suggests:

If he's running XP (preferred) or Vista he can use: MojoPac http://www.mojopac.com


Another more technical approach to make portable applications is ThinApp http://hacktolive.org/wiki/Make_port...VMware_ThinApp

[Big Frank]

I carry a 32Gb usb stick with all my critical apps and I really like the idea of running XDP off the stick.

[AntonyF]

You know I remember we talked about this a lot at Xara, and I think we were even planning a USB stick version of Xtreme or Xara X. Not sure what happened to the plan though (it has been a while, my memory is bad).

[astrosci]

This conversation has been dead for a long time, but I hope Xara seriously considers a portable version. Something that will run from a flash drive or portable hard drive. I could really use this at work where they will not allow me to install software.