Portable Outlook?

[sungod]

I was reading with interest about Thunderbird portable which you can install on, say a USB drive. Looked at it, installed it and it looks good. However, does anyone know if there is a portable outlook that you could do the same with. Just personal taste, I prefer outlook. Thanks in advance.

[Rice_King]

MojoPac:

Not a "portable" version of Outlook per se, but a portable operating system on which you can then load Outllook and use from within.

• MojoPac can turn any USB 2.0 compliant portable storage device, including your iPod, or your USB flash or hard drives, into your Personal Computer - your MojoPac PC.
  
• You can install any of the most popular Windows applications on your MojoPac PC. You can use the same version of the applications you use daily at work (such as Microsoft Office) or at home (such as Photoshop, iTunes, IM and Games).
  
• With MojoPac, you can go to any Windows XP computer, plug in your MojoPac device, and bring up your MojoPac PC. The experience is exactly as if you are logging into your Personal Computer, complete with your desktop, shortcuts, applications and preferences.
  *** Free Microsoft Vista support coming Q2 2007 for all current customers.
  
• Privately and Securely
  Your applications, browser history, and activities leave no trace on the computer you are connected to. What happens on MojoPac, stays on MojoPac.
  

Note: The current version of MojoPac requires administrative privileges on the host PC.

[phazey]

Don't know about portable outlook as a complete solution, but you can always copy the mailbox files (*.pst) to the stick and reconfigure outlook to look there on the pc's....

Edit: Having thought about it, VMWare player with an install of XP/Office will also work...same as above i suppose though...

Edited May 26, 2007 by phazey

[sungod]

Many thanks about MojoPac, apart from the solution I am looking for, it seems a very good tool in general.

[Rice_King]

Many thanks about MojoPac, apart from the solution I am looking for, it seems a very good tool in general.

Likewise, if you DO find a way to make Outlook portable, I would be very keen on knowing the details.

As for MojoPac, I have it installed on my 80 GB video iPod. It is very handy to have a portable (and private) desktop whenever I visit friends or internet cafes. The only caveat being that you need admin rights on the host machine, which rules out using it on many public PCs.

[A_Traveller]

Many thanks about MojoPac, apart from the solution I am looking for, it seems a very good tool in general.

Likewise, if you DO find a way to make Outlook portable, I would be very keen on knowing the details.

As for MojoPac, I have it installed on my 80 GB video iPod. It is very handy to have a portable (and private) desktop whenever I visit friends or internet cafes. The only caveat being that you need admin rights on the host machine, which rules out using it on many public PCs.

Did you look at the Portable Apps option before going to MojoPac? There seem at least initially to be considerable similarities, though not of approach.

Regards

PS One of the reasons for the difficulty in running Outlook in this manner, is something called Exchange

/edit add PS//

Edited May 28, 2007 by A_Traveller

[Rice_King]

Did you look at the Portable Apps option before going to MojoPac? There seem at least initially to be considerable similarities, though not of approach.

Actually there are NO similarities (besides portability) between portable apps and MojoPac. I need more than just portable applications when I am traveling. I need my own desktop with all my personal applications. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Google Earth to name a few. MojoPac provides a personal / private desktop on other people's PCs.

PS One of the reasons for the difficulty in running Outlook in this manner, is something called Exchange

Since chucking the corporate world, I use Outlook to connect to three POP3 accounts. No Exchange server required.

[kdvsn]

Did you look at the Portable Apps option before going to MojoPac? There seem at least initially to be considerable similarities, though not of approach.

Actually there are NO similarities (besides portability) between portable apps and MojoPac. I need more than just portable applications when I am traveling. I need my own desktop with all my personal applications. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Google Earth to name a few. MojoPac provides a personal / private desktop on other people's PCs.

PS One of the reasons for the difficulty in running Outlook in this manner, is something called Exchange

Since chucking the corporate world, I use Outlook to connect to three POP3 accounts. No Exchange server required.

However Outlook 2003 on Mojopac works as well with an Exchange server as it does with a POP3 server. The problem what a corporate user would be likly to have is not related to exchange per se, it's that they might not be able to access their company's email server without running a VPN. At present, Mojopac (and the Portable Thunderbird, for that matter) can connect though a VPN connection only if the VPN client is installed and running on the host computer, with neither Mojopac nor with any "Portable Application" that I've found can you install a VPN client onto a USB stick and start the VPN connection from there.

In any case, running Mojopac and various Portable Apps is not mutually exclusive, you can have them both installed on the same removable USB drive. The beauty of the Portable Apps is that they do not require the use of the Windows registry and can be install simply by copying the applications into a directory on the USB drive. The beauty of Mojopac is that it intercepts calls to the registry and caches the registry to the USB drive so that you can install a wide range of standard applications onto your USB drive without the requiring you to obtain special versions of those applications that can run without accessing the registry. The downsides that I've found with Mojopac are that it can be slow to start up and that it won't work if you don't have adminstrator priveledges on the host machine (which it s significant limitation if you plan to use it in cybercafes).

[A_Traveller]

Thanks for the summary, since PA ia a very hackable approach it is possible to provide a multi-functional 'desktop', but I agree not out of the box. Since the admin rights issue would be a killer for me anyway I wouldn't find MP suitable.

By the by you both missed the point I was making, Outlook is not designed to be 'portable', only the data.

Regards

[kdvsn]

Thanks for the summary, since PA ia a very hackable approach it is possible to provide a multi-functional 'desktop', but I agree not out of the box. Since the admin rights issue would be a killer for me anyway I wouldn't find MP suitable.

By the by you both missed the point I was making, Outlook is not designed to be 'portable', only the data.

Regards

True enough that Outlook is not designed to per portable. But that's one of the primary purposes of Mojopac - to make applications portable (meanign to be able to run from a USB stick) that were never designed to be portable. Outlook is one of them that works in a portable fashion when installed on Mojopac.

BTW, the other drawback of Mojopac is that it's not free. The main reason that I bought it was to be able to run Microsoft Money when I travel; while I have Outlook installed on it I don't use it a great deal.

[Rice_King]

BTW, the other drawback of Mojopac is that it's not free. The main reason that I bought it was to be able to run Microsoft Money when I travel; while I have Outlook installed on it I don't use it a great deal.

A FREE alternative to MojoPac, Moka5 looks very promising.

It does something similar to MojoPac but more. It uses VMware player and it streams the virtual machines from the network. You can build your own LivePCs but you can also subscribe to LivePCs that someone else built. It has a library of pre-configured LivePCs that you can try out immediately. It has Ubuntu 7.04, BackTrack 2, OpenOffice, Quake2 etc. A lot of open source software pre-configured ready to be used. You can run Windows on Windows, Linux on Windows, or whatever VMware supports on Windows.

An informative review on Moka5: Moka5's LivePC Platform - VMware with a Portable Twist

Note: Like MojoPac, it requires administrative rights on the host machine.