I mentioned on Twitter that I use Dropbox and PortableApps together, and I was surprised that other folks weren’t doing this. So I figured I’d share here, too.
My FirefoxPortable, ThunderbirdPortable, and PidginPortable program folders all fit easily into my Dropbox. I have the Dropbox client installed on my home desktop, home laptop, and office desktop. When I stop using one computer to move to another (like when I come home from work), I make sure to close these programs. By the time I get home, all of the files have synced, so I can now see all the Firefox windows I had left open, all the Thunderbird emails I saved at work are available, and my Pidgin chat logs are there to be searched. This has allowed me to ditch my jump drive altogether!
Caveats: I don’t have the client installed on the Reference Desk computer, since it is a shared computer and that would give everyone access to my files. I also have to remember to close the programs as I change computers, as it will create “conflict” files in Dropbox otherwise. I can tell you from experience, it’s a lot easier to remember to close programs than it is to keep up with a thumb drive!
Give it a try, and let me know if you encounter any other tech tips I might find helpful!
June 14th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Brilliant. This idea pop’d in my mind a second ago, decided to google it and this post came up. Btw SoundCloud is doing an idea with Dropbox where randoms can drop mp3 (etc) into your DB, check out an example here: http://soundcloud.com/gottadancedirty/dropbox
June 17th, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Wow. That is a really cool idea! I’m really interested in cloud computing and the whole idea of information moving off the desktop, but I thought it’d be a while until our applications did too!
September 26th, 2009 at 11:52 am
I have done something similar with Thunderbird, except that I have put the profile folder into Dropbox and left the application in the Programs folder on each computer.
Is this any different in terms of usability or does it amount to the same thing? It does let me use Thunderbird 3 beta 4 for one thing, but that is a purely temporary advantage :)
September 27th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Hi Owen! I think it would do pretty much the same thing, as long as each computer is set up to refer to that folder, and there’s enough time for the folder to sync between use.
September 30th, 2009 at 9:45 am
I just realised that your method has two very decided advantages over mine.
I am trying to keep my netbook “clean”, so that Windows behaves as well as it can. Periodically I intend to reinstall it.
If I make as many of my apps as possible PortableApps then:
1. they won’t ever do anything to the registry which should help keep Windows running smoothly;
2. they will reinstall themselves automatically as soon as I (manually) reinstall Dropbox – including all my tweaks and customizations.
I’m convinced and off to do it right now :)
October 17th, 2009 at 3:54 am
I’m doing the same with Portable Thunderbird since 4 months now. I manage 8 email addresses and an archive folder with many subfolders.
Everytime I’m taking care that the dropbox is synced before change computer. But I get conflict very often on big folders.
Also the cahce folder of the dropbox application is growing and the hard disk became full some time.
Do you have an idea about what to do to avoid conflict and cache growing?
October 26th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
There are two things that I’ve done to improve the performance of Dropbox and Thunderbird together.
1) Load Thunderbird portable on a jump drive.
2) Set my “Local Folders” to a folder in Dropbox.
This helped to reduce the conflicts that were arising.
If you leave all of ThunderbirdPortable in Dropbox, Dropbox can have problems with synching the system files, which can cause errors in TbirdPortable.
Thunderbird also has difficulty with large mail folders (with an upper limit of 4gb). So if you archive a lot of mail (like I do!), it’s important to regularly export your mail using ImportExportTools or a similar plugin.
May 5th, 2010 at 11:24 am
I had PortableThunderbird in my DropBox folder, and was really happy with using it on two different computers effortlessly. But I kept getting errors where it would tell me that there wasn’t enough space to download a message. I switched it out of the DropBox folder and those errors stopped. There’s plenty of space on the drive and in the DropBox account, so I don’t get what is going on here. Any hints?
May 10th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Hi Aaron. You may be encountering one of the limitations of Thunderbird–its problems with large folders. I’ve encountered this problem before, and there are suggested fixes here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Limits_-_Thunderbird#Folders_and_messages . I hope that helps!
April 12th, 2011 at 1:21 pm
I know that this is a fairly old post, but here in 2011 I think it is amazing to find Mr. Cliff Landis when googling “portableapps.com dropbox.”
June 14th, 2011 at 5:42 pm
Here too, a search of DropBox + PortableApps = turns up a post where someone who know how to do it, and does it right.
After thinking about the set up, we can illustrate the settings Conceptually:
1) The Operating System
2) The Applications
3) The Files
1) The OS belongs embedded in its soil – the hard disk
2) The Apps belong on an external, portable jumpdrive.
3) The Files (documents) and Folders (AppData, Local, etc) belong in a DropBox folder. (DropBox is buried in the C:/ProgramFiles/)
December 3rd, 2011 at 2:39 am
Thank you for this tip. This bug was driving me crazy…