Your classmate Christoph Neumann suggested installing software you want to use in the labs (or anywhere else you go) on a flash drive. In order to be installed on a flash drive a program must be modified slightly. Several sites list and evaluate portable software:
At these sites, you will find programs like Notepad++, a text editor with a lot more features than Notepad, Filezilla, a file transfer program we will be using, the Firefox and Chrome Web browsers, Audacity, an audio editor we will be using, Skype for voice over IP calls, Thunderbird, my preferred email client, the GIMP image processor, and others.