My computers are terrible
But at work I have access to a Macbook Pro (newest one) so this computer plays 1080p files no problem, so I would think that it would do fine editing.

How or where would I look to do something like making an executable file on a flash drive and then save files to the computer itself so that I can treat kdenlive as a USB OS like Pen Drive Linux.

Has anyone done this before? If so please clue me in.

Hmm, Kdenlive can not run as a standalone OS, but if you have (much) experience with linux maybe you could create a slackware based minimal live image only containing Kdenlive and a basic operating system.

Though the more easy way is to use a live CD/USB image of a distro that gets already shipped with a recent Kdenlive release.
In my opinion AV Linux should fit to your needs ;)
http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html