WinPython and miniconda are more current distros than portable python, and they come in both 32 & 64bit flavors.

Portable python hasn't been updated recently and only offers 32 bit which is IMO worthless except for the bundle as app case, eg meld installer.

I was going to suggest the same - if python.org can't support local installs (sans admin rights) b/c people will always look to it for direction,  python.org should offer links to endorsed windows installer. I don't love it, but it will be familiar to windows users braving the open source world, similar to ruby which recommends winruby. Any endorsed distro **must** be built with msvc, so that all packages with extensions can be built. I don't care to support packages that depend on autotools.

Why can't msvcrt90.dll amd python27.dll be bundled into install directory? Seems to solve case #1 (for personal use) and #2 (bundled as app)? No admin rights required, just unzip. Why would you want to move python to program files? 

Case #3 would be swell, would windows ever do that? If we assume windows distros are akin to *nix them perhaps we need to push the --user or --home=~/.local options and virtualenv. That seems to be the way conda is going. Ruby rvm is more like that as well. Especially if we are going to force users to start using 3.5. What is Microsoft's official position on python. are they officially supporting python on windows? Seems like it with newest April's and vcforpython27.

BTW miniconda does not install all of the sci-data packages, only conda and python 2.7. works with pip and --home=~/.local scheme. Is this the future for windows users? We should reach a consensus I think