If you’re like me, you loathe installing software. Then again, maybe there aren’t many people like me. In fact, maybe my personality is a statistically improbable occurrence. So improbable that it’s more than likely that I don’t exist.

In other news, here’s a list of extremely useful software that you don’t have to install — they all have single executable downloads that require no additional files. This alone makes these applications great for stashing on a thumb drive or downloading for a single-time emergency use on your friend’s machine.

• uTorrent – great for those rare moments when you need to download a quick, uh, VMWare image
• SciTE – a lightweight and competent editor that includes syntax definitions for, *gasp*, PHP (and other lovely languages)
• The pervasive PuTTY – quite possibly the best Windows SSH client ever
• WinSCP – when you get sick of the Windows command line (which you no doubt will, because it’s not really good at all), try joining the 21st century and using a GUI