Portable installation

[john.cole2007]

Forgive me asking what must seem a very simple question, perhaps too simple
for me to find in the manual or FAQ. My son's a recently-graduated engineer
who learned and liked Matlab at college. His job takes him to various
locations and he isn't able to install programs on the Windows PCs he uses.
Is there a way he can run Octave from a USB portable hard drive? I've
considered running Linux on the portable drive with hardware emulation
software (Qemu) and hence the Linux version of Octave, but that seems a very
tortuous route. Is there a better way? Any help would be much appreciated.

John Cole