Quote: Is it possible to use an external hard drive to store the PD10 program, so that the whole thing could be used quickly on more than one laptop? I guess the answer is no, but I'd like to understand why.

Power Director and most all other software use the Windows registry to store the basic operating environment, the registration information and other variables required for the program to operate.

You can have the program on an external drive, but you could have problems every time the drive is disconnected from the computer/laptop. The drive designation can and likely will change when reconnected. Thus causing the program to fail to launch because the operating system cannot find the necessary files to run the program.

Another reason is that you only buy a license to install the software on one computer/laptop at a time. It is actually not legal to have the software installed on more than one system at any given time unless you have purchased additional licenses.

Hal