Number 298 - March 2008

Life On a 'Smart Drive'
by Mark Kellner, Valencia Lakes Computer UG, October 2007
Here's an interesting proposition: get rid of your computer. Instead, carry your applications and a document or 2,000 on a thumb-sized "drive" which uses flash memory chips. Plug the drive in anywhere and, presto, you're computing. Get up and leave, and all your data, including the confidential stuff, stays with you.    That's not exactly the business proposition behind the "U3" flash devices being marketed as "smart drives," but its not too far off. Instead, the idea is that you'll carry some key applications and files on the aforementioned smart drive, and be ready to work anywhere. In these days of heightened airport security, it's an idea whose time may well have come.    In the US market according to the U3 trade group (I wonder what Bono thinks of that name), vendors selling the drive include msystems, SanDisk, Best Buy's Geek Squad, Kingston Technology Company, Memorex, and Verbatim. The SanDisk folks were kind enough to send over a 2 Gbyte Cruzer Titanium U3 device, and it's really difficult NOT to like the little thing. For one, the $110 list price isn't too much to ask for that much storage. Then there's the U3 bit.    Here's how it works. There's a partition on the flash drive that stores small programs and lets you open then from a system tray pop-up menu in Windows. There are a number of applications you can download for the SanDisk U3 drive, some free and some for sale. I selected a Web browser called Maxthon and the Weather Bug utility to join the pre-installed Skype Internet telephony application, an antivirus program as well as software to synchronize data on the USB drive and a given computer. Two final programs on the drive offer a "tour" of the LaunchPad menu software and a password management program.	If I wanted, I could pack the OpenOffice productivity suite, or, presumably, parts of it, on the drive, as well as various games and other utility items. Of the list of programs at the SanDisk download site, I found none larger than 230 Mbytes, which, while about 1.15-percent of the drive's capacity, isn't so onerous as to make the Cruzer unusable. Indeed, with an office suite, a Web browser and an e-mail program, most of us would be "good to go," mobile computing-wise, and still have a vast amount of storage space -1.25 Gbytes or more - in which to keep a variety of files.    Security doesn't seem to be an issue: Working in a PC format, it's possible to password- and file-protect data on the drive, which would come in rather handy, I'd suspect.    The operating speed of the programs on the flash drive matches those of programs I installed on a computer's hard drive. There were no speed bumps in using the software, or in saving files to the flash drive. In short, it worked just as well as an internal computer disc drive, but it's tiny and stores a lot of data.    These drive are really small: 1.875 by 0.75 inches, and easily fit on a keychain. Each features a retractable USB port. With capacities of up to 2GB, the maker claims it can hold the equivalent up to 1,400 floppy disks.    What's next for these items? I'm not sure, but I'm glad they're around. Info on the SanDisk products can be found, oddly enough, at www.sandisk.com
Number 298 - March 2008