html:
For your purpose, I'd suggest PortableWebAp. It costs like $20 USD to get, but it's small enough to fit on a thumb-drive and run a full fledged dev server. I used it for a bit until I got my laptop 😉
SimplyBea:
AppServ is just another application that you download an it installs Apache, PHP, mySQL, phpMyAdmin for you.
I personally like PortableWebAp.... but whatever works for your situation is what you should use.