I for one would love to know how you eventually defeat this crapware but until then.....
My solution is Knoppix

How quickly? Well that kind of depends on the box your booting it on.
Pentium 4 1.7ghz, 256mb ddr ram, 32mb ATI agp graphics card, 52x CDROM.

Presuming you can get online and you know how to access your remote machine then sure you could save your work on the remote box. I like ssh. Or, if the boxes you're on have two cdrom drives maybe burning your work to cd is an option.
No CD burner on campus. Getting online shouldnt be hard. The college uses a simple dhcp system. Auto IP requesting etc. I think saving Knoppix settings to a floppy would work, but saving my projects on a floppy would definitely not. I'd have to do it remotely somehow, such as through SSH. I sure would like to be able to edit a remote document right in KWrite and save it without having to dick with FTP though. I like Linux and I like having a console when I need it but I really hate using the console and I really hate console based apps.