Alter Registry Apps to Make 'em PortableQ?

Hi, I've been stocking up on portable applications for school this year when a thought occurred to me…

Can you install an app that writes to Windows Registry during install so that it will install on the external drive without writing to the registry, and not have to use registry entries to run?

Basically, I want to put Photoshop on a flash drive. I have GIMP, but it's rather cumbersome to use and I am much better with PS…

This is kind of a far-out question, but if anyone knows of anything similar to this, please post!

Depends, at our school installs which wrote to registry were blocked BUT we could use .reg files. So we always grabbed those and set the values "manually" with separate .REG files.

http://reymendoza.blogspot.com/2006/08/portable-photoshop-cs2-26mb.html

ooh that blogspot article looks interesting, I'll have to try it. And how do you use a separate .reg file? Just include what PS would have normally written to win registry in a text file with .reg extension, or what? I hate the registry and try to stay away from it…

Oh, and bad news today: they installed vista on everything! It's a ram hog and is sooooo heavy on eye candy at expense of functionality. VISTA SUCKS!

So, anyway, what would I have to do with a reg file?

Thanks, guys! Keep it coming, our admin is very micro$haft friendly and does not want anyone using anything that is not preinstalled on the comps :\