Installation

Installing into Windows 

Installation of the Windows (NT/2K/XP/Vista) version of PortaBill can be done either using the packaged installer (PortaBillSetup.exe) or by unzipping the ZIP distribution file (PortaBillSetup-win.ZIP).

Normally, the aim is to run PortaBill from a portable drive such as a USB flash drive or external USB hard drive.  If you aren't concerned with being able to run PortaBill from your computers normal internal hard drive, then perhaps the ZIP installation is the simpler of the two methods.

Using the packaged installer (PortaBillSetup-win.exe)

Using the packaged installer will do a managed install of PortaBill into Windows, updating the registry and providing convenient shortcuts and uninstall information.

Once you have downloaded the installer, simply double click on it and follow the prompts.  Note that by default it will install PortaBill into your windows "Program files" area.  If you want to be able to run PortaBill from a removable drive, then you can either:

Install to the default location, and copy the folder PortaBill from your windows "Program files" area to the removable drive, or

Install to the removable drive itself.  Doing this will work, however any uninstall information and shortcuts will require that drive to be mounted to work.

Using the ZIP distribution (PortaBillSetup-win.zip)

Installing using the ZIP file is as simple as unzipping the entire contents of the ZIP file (remembering to keep all folder names) to the location you want to run PortaBill from.  Normally this location will be a folder on a removable drive.

You will end up with a folder called PortaBill that contains the entire application, including the Javatm runtime environment.

Installing into Linux 

Installation of the Linux version of PortaBill is very simple.  The installation package is simply a gzipped tarball of the application environment, including the Javatm runtime.

Using the tool of your choice, simply extract the entire contents of the archive to the directory from which you want to run PortaBill.

PortaBill has been tested using uBuntu Linux, and the bundled JVM is a cut-down version of the i586 Javatm 6 JVM. Whilst I believe it should work on other distributions of Linux, I don't have the resources to test them all.  If you experience problems running PortaBill under another distribution of Linux, please let me know via the forums.

Installing into Mac OSX

Installation of the Mac OSX version of PortaBill requires only that you unzip the downloaded file onto your Mac into the folder from which you want to run PortaBill

This will place a "PortaBill.app" package in the folder.  Then, assuming you are running Mac OSX Tiger with Java 1.5 installed, all you need do is double click on the package.