What is FPAC?

FPAC is a collection of portable applications, which you can copy onto your pendrive so that all the applications you like will be always with you, wherever you go!
Although it is mainly for the blind and visually impaired, everyone can use it, since most of the applications are well-known amongst the sighted.

Included Apps

This package includes the following programs:

7-zip 4.65 - A file packer
Audacity 1.3.7 - A free sound editing program
Aus Logics Disk Defrag 1.6.24.355 - A disk defragmenter utility.
CdEx 1.70b2 - A cd ripper.
ClamWin Antivirus 0.95.1 - An antivirus program
DSpeech 1.55.3 - A TTS (Text To Speech) program with functionality of ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) integrated. (Includes the pdf plugin).
FileZilla 3.2.4.1 - An ftp client.
FreeCommander 2009.02 - A file manager.
Infra Recorder 0.46.2 - a cd/dvd burning suite.
Jarte 3.3 - A word processor.
McTwit 1.8 - A twitter client.
Media Player Classic Homecinema 1.2.908.0 - A media player.
MegaIRC 4.05 - An IRC client.
Metapad 3.51 - A text editor.
Miranda IM 0.8.0 (Alpha build 34) - A multiprotocol instant messenger client. It has the following plugins:
1. History Events (Unicode)
2. History Log (Unicode)
3. Always Online
4. AutoReplacer
5. BClist (Unicode)
6. DbExport
7. Find a Message
8. History Keeper (Unicode)
9. History Sweeper (Unicode)
10. Keep Status
11. MEspeak (Unicode)
12. Message Notify
13. Message Export
14. Notifier
15. Quick Contacts (Unicode)
16. Remove Personal Settings
17. Rss News
18. Startup Status
19. Crash dumper (Unicode)
20. Twitter
21. Updater (Unicode)
22. Weather Protocol.
Mozilla Firefox 3.0.10 - A web browser, with the following extensions installed:
1. Adblock plus
2. AutoAuth
3. ChatZilla
4. Down them all!
5. Popup sound
6. WebVisum
Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0b2 - An email client.
NVDA r2975 - A screen reader.
NVDA Snapshot Downloader 1.2.1 - An utility to download the latest snapshot or installer of NVDA.
PopPeeper 3.4.0 (with WebMail plugin) - A Pop3 client which has basic smtp support.
QMenu 1.1A - A menu creator program. It also provides the pop up menu to launch all the applications in the FPAC.
Skype 3.8.188 - An internet telephony application (with accessibility features enabled)
Unlocker 1.8.7 - A file unlocking tool.
UTorrent 1.8.3 beta (build 15358) - A bittorrent client.
Winamp 5.52 - A media player. Includes the Sound Solution Plugin, which makes the sound quality much better.
WinDirStat 1.1.2 - a program to display Windows Directory Statistics
WinMd5Sum 1.0.1.55 - a Windows MD5 checksumming utility
WinTrans 1.0 - a braille to text and text to braille translator/embosser.

Download

The latest version of FPAC is 1.5, you can download it here. (93 mb)
Number of downloads since 1.4:

Change Log

1.5:

Added CdEx and WinTrans.
Updated McTwit and NVDA.
Removed Readme, since it became obsolete.

Installation Instructions

After downloading the file, extract its contents to your pendrive's root directory. If you'd like to run a program, you can do so by running the provided fpac.exe, which can be found in the root directory of your pendrive.
Please launch the applications only by using the provided FPAC.exe in the FPAC root directory, otherwise the programs might write some unwanted data to the host computer's hard drive.

How to Upgrade

I've written a small AutoIt script to remove the default settings of some programs, so that old files can be overwritten without losing any settings.
You can download it Here.
Number of downloads:
For computer geeks, here is the source code
Number of downloads:

Usage instructions:

After downloading the latest file, extract it to the root directory of the latest FPAC (i.e. where the autorun.inf file is located). You can use the free 7-zip program to do it.
Run RemoveSettings.exe and follow the instructions.
Copy the content of the FPAC folder (including the folder called programs as well) to the root folder of your pendrive and overwrite your old version of FPAC.

Please note, some antiviruses may detect the settings remover program as a virus. This, of course, is a false alarm, I'm against viruses as much as you. In this case, there are two possibilities:

Either download the sourcecode, and AutoIt and run the script after installing it, or
you can temporarily disable the realtime protection of your antivirus.

The included programs and NVDA

Skype is configured to have the accessibility features turned on, thus NVDA can read the menus correctly.
NVDA is not able to announce the names of the menus in Free Commander, however shortcuts can be defined for all the menu items. A ctrl+shift+k shortcut have been added to open this dialog.
NVDA is not able to read the displayed information in Aus Logics Disk Defrag, however after the defragmentation is finished, there will be an option to view an html report.

Contact Me

If you'd like to contact me, you can do any of the following:
I'm on Klango most of the time, by the name of Erion.
You can use this form to send me an e-mail.
You can also follow me on Twitter.

Special Thanks

I'd like to extend my gratitude towards a number of people. Without you, FPAC would not exist today! Thanks all!
Andre Louis, for the initial Miranda version which I updated, added plugins to and further tweaked.
All the people who helped me in a way, either by suggesting new applications or gave comments, including: Ozone, NBF, TMan, JTicket, OAron, Simon, Moodley, Elliott, Piciok, PVagner, Parham, Josh, Amrit. If I forgot to mention others, it was unintentional.