There are times when you come to a computer and need to do something that really needs administrative privileges, but you don’t know the admin password (if yours is a machine where your institutional policy says not to do this – DON’T).  In these cases, there are a plethora of portable versions of popular software which you can use right from your USB stick.

Over the years I have collected these.  A friend suggested that this would be something that people would need more often than not.  So here is a list of, what we consider to be the best software out there for this purpose.

Just to be clear, I do NOT endorse use of any software that violates your institutional policy.  This is meant for purely personal use ONLY.

Before I continue, the two most popular and safe websites for portable software are:

Portableapps.com
Portablefreeware.com

Many of the apps I will list here come from these sites.