somehow I was expecting the portable version to be configured to look for settings and friends in the directory containing the exe.  It doesn't by default I guess.

it should.

what are you saying happens -- that its creating directories under user\documents and using that directory instead of the executable directory, even for portable version?

Ok i see the problem, the portable version mistakenly has a ConfigDir.ini file in it, when it should just have a ConfigDir_Default.ini.
Delete the ConfigDir.ini and it should work portably as expected.  I've reuploaded a new beta without the ConfigDir.ini.

I think we're all good now -- thanks for the testing!