U3 technology  

I never heard of either. It's a SanDisk cruiser micro 2 gig drive with u3 smart drive technology. i loaded mozillas browser and email client as well as several games and a couple utilites i haven't figured out yet. they all came free from the download site so I took advantage of the price.

I did a little reading on it, and from what I understand...you can download any program you have installed on your PC onto the disc...take it with you anywhere you want to go...plug it into another PC, and use that program WITHOUT having to intall it on that second PC. You can just boot the program from the disc, and run it.

Now if that ain't cool, I don't know what is.
Niice going Carl.

cdrxo

Although I haven't upgraded mine that far yet there are plans in PC magazine to turn the U# drive into a private computing platform. You can even make it bootable with it's own (Linux) OS. i have loaded the right software but haven't set it up yet to provide trace free surfing and e-mail on public computers. It is possible, with the right configurtion, to do all your internet work in virtual anonymity without leaving a trace on other computers by having all the web activity route through the thumb drive. It can even secure you against spying from other people on the same network with U3 firewall and security software.

I sounds absolutely fasinating to me Carl.
I wonder how the FBI or CIA views this technology?

(Ah, chances are, they're probably using it themselves anyway.)

cdrxo

They even have some that double as a security key. A small file inside the drive and sometimes partitioned off or on a seperate chip is neccessary to activate your laptop so that until you put it in the USB port the computer remains encrypted and locked to maintain security. Mine even has a password manager that resides on the drive and inputs passwords when I need them. Their locked on the drive and don't get put into the host computer memory so that they can remain secure and the program is locked with a paessword of it's own so you can use different passwords on everything(like the experts tell you to) while only needing to remember 1 password.

Now THAT...you gotta love!

cdrxo

I use the library computer a lot and also needed to take PowerPoint files and such back and forth to the church computer for leading music. The flash drive seemed like the most useful tool since not all computers have floppy drives anymore(the churches doesn't) and burning Cd's for such a small number of files seems silly. The only problem is that the front USB port is in a small cavity the drives body won't fit into at the church so I have to plug it into the back from under the sound room desk.

these things are variously known as Data Keys, Flash Drives and Thumb Drives. There's probably a few names I haven't heard as well. They use flash memory to save files on a small device around the size of your thumb or smaller. A lot of them have key ring attachments that let you keep them handy. They plug into the computer at a USB port and act as portable memory so you can move files around to other computers like a floppy disk but more convenient and durable. You can check out one of the major brands by doing a search for "cruzer micro" or SanDisk".