Patent ID: 8850077

Claim:
A method for providing a portable document services environment on a computer system, the method comprising: automatically downloading an installation application from a first drive partition on a portable device to a computer system; automatically initiating the installation application on the computer system, wherein the installation application automatically configures the computer system to manage a document service application installed on a second drive partition of the portable device when the portable device is connected to the computer system; automatically accessing the document service application on the portable device by the computer system based on information contained in the installation application; automatically receiving a plurality of document service preferences from the portable device on the computer system, wherein the plurality of document service preferences are entered as registry entries on the computer system, wherein the plurality of document service preferences comprise: one or more user preferences, wherein each user preference defines a preference that a user has for all electronic documents serviced by all document service applications, one or more document service application preferences, wherein each document service application preference defines a preference that the user has for all electronic documents serviced by the document service application, and one or more document preferences, wherein each document preference defines a preference that the user has for a certain electronic document; selecting an electronic document; performing one or more document services for the selected electronic document based on the one or more document service preferences using the document service application; and deleting the one or more document service preferences from the computer system when the portable device is disconnected from the computing system.