Portable edition of Opera version 10

Portable Windows applications are great for defensive computing.

For one thing, they don't touch the registry, a huge house of cards just waiting to fall over. They also make it easy to switch from one computer to another, such as using a desktop computer normally but traveling with a laptop.

Then too, they make it possible to keep different versions of the same program available in a single OS instance. Or, you can have multiple instances of the same program available.

Perhaps the most important aspect, is that because they are totally self-contained, they are easy to backup. Portable applications let you take Windows somewhere Microsoft never intended; backing up entire applications.

As if this wasn't enough, portable applications also offer privacy when using someone else's computer.

I live in portable versions of Firefox and Thunderbird. Back in July, I wrote about a portable version of Google's Chrome browser.

Turns out, there is also a portable version of the Opera web browser called Opera-USB.

Despite the name Opera-USB, portable applications, in general, are not married to USB flash drives in any way shape or form. They run just fine off the C disk (the exception being U3 applications, which I avoid).

Opera-USB comes from Markus Obermair, not directly from Opera Software. However, he says that he has "authorization" from Opera and that the company has tested it.

It's a shame that the portable versions of Opera, Chrome and Firefox all come from third parties. Why don't the original software developers see the value cited above?