Hi Norman,
Old Jon suggested that you visit
http://www.pcwebopaedia.com and I agree
wholeheartedly. Jon gives good advice and many of your unfamiliar terms
can be defined there.
I'd like to try to answer one of your questions, because it is near and
dear to my heart. Please understand that these examples are going to be
vastly simplified from reality.
You asked what "install" means, and why some programs must be
installed and others not.
Programs that need to be installed are programs that will not run unless
and until they are transferred from where they are (usually on some form
of media) to where they need to be (scattered all over your hard drive).
Most of the time, an "installable program" is an .exe file with many, many
other files containing the data that the program needs in order to perform
its functions. Installable programs can drop files all over your hard
drive, alter your registry in many different ways, and might even cause
your familiar operating system to behave differently. They almost always
require auto-uninstallers because there is NO WAY that the typical user
can find all of the alterations, additions and deletions that were made
during the installation.
An example of an "installable program" is Microsoft Word. Files end up all
over your hard drive like the playing cards in a casino after an
earthquake.
No-install programs are different. They contain everything that they need
to function right where they are. You can run them from any media, and you
can copy them onto your hard drive but you are not required to do that in
order for the program to run. If the program has been copied to your hard
drive and you decide that you don't like it, just erase the folder
containing the no-install program and it's gone. No mess, no fuss,
everything in one place. I love no-install programs. I'm ALWAYS looking
for cool, new no-install programs!
An example of a no-install program is RegShot from
http://www.snapfiles.com/get/regshot.html
There are probably better explanations out there for the differences
between these two types of software, so I'll invite everyone to jump in
and write responses or additions to this message.