flash drives

I work in a district that many students have no high speed Internet access. This is not out of want, but geography. High speed access is almost unobtainable to many parts of the Northwoods. Because of this, students can not download many of the great open source programs out there.

This morning I had the thought of purchasing a bunch of flash drives and pre-loading them with programs like Open Office, GIMP, and other useful tools. It could also be used to replace many of the documents that are printed each year with PDFs.

I know this has been done many times to varying success around the country in schools and businesses, but feel that it could be helpful here. If you have stories of success or failure in the use of flash drives, please share.