It needs to INSTALL as a portable--digging it out of the registry is uncool.

If you advertise a program as portable, there should be an option to install as a portable rather than making the owner dig it back out of their registry. An excellent example of a program that does this is DavidRM's software 'The Journal' where you get an option at the time of installation to make it portable. I believe Truecrypt also gives a portable option at installation. A less elegant but acceptable option is to have a separate portable installation. But if you advertise as portable and then we have to dig it out of our registries, you automatically start losing respect. Better not to advertise as portable but you could say something like 'its possible to run off of a usb stick.'--which is not the same thing.