At present, the requirement for "personalized portals", means dotLRN. the (old)portal package should not be used. The new-portal package is not dependent to dotlrn, and can be used (with some kludges) to present portals to user. In fact those boxes on the new dotlrn.openforce.net are in a portal! but, it's not personalized or very easy to do, it will be easier to use the new-portal package outside of dotlrn soon. dotlrn is the part that provides personalization, aggregation, etc.
To summarize this rambling: check out dotlrn.
