An impulse buy.....

[poltr1]

Last week, I went to OfficeMax to take a look at the items on their clearance table. Next to the checkout, they had a pile of SanDisk Cruzer 1 Gb flash-memory drives for $17.99. This was the price after their instant rebate, and it was a significant price cut from the regular price. So I went home with one.

Yesterday, I found out that the price had dropped to $14.99. (Argh.) And they had 2 Gb flash drives for $24.99. So I braved the weather and took home a 2 Gb drive last night.

They won't work on the laptop, but it works on the desktop (now that I have XP on it). I can also use it to shuttle files to and from work, or anyplace I go that has a USB 2.0 port.


These two drives feature U3 technology, which is supposed to enable flash drives to store both data and the programs to run them. Imagine taking your flash drive to a computer that doesn't have Microsoft Office, but your flash drive does. U3 will enable you to read and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint docs on them, and not leave any trace behind after you take the flash drive with you. Or if you're traveling out of town, all you need to take is the flash drive and not a bulky laptop.

There isn't a U3 version of MS Office out yet, but ThinkFree Office can do the job today. Or so their propaganda says. I'm going to try it out.

So far, this technology looks promising. I just hope more vendors (other than SanDisk) hop on the bandwagon.

Comments

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Two thoughts:

(1) I already see reports of more paranoid workplaces banning thumb drives and even physically disabling USB ports. Making it easy to run software direct from the thumb drive will increase the paranoia. There are legitimate security questions (how do you verify that there are no viruses), trumped-up security questions (how do you keep employees from stealing data -- in most cases, the info the employees have access to is not really worth stealing; when it is, proper access controls and making sure the employees are trustworthy makes more sense than making them jump through more and more stupid hoops), and control-freak micromanagers who worry more about whether an employee plays a game on the work machine than on whether the employee gets his work done. All of these seem to get more traction with U3 by your description. (Which isn't to say that it's bad technology, just that I foresee unintended consequences if it takes off.)

(2) The rigamarole of having to "properly install" ordinary application software, as opposed to just making the executable visible and running it, is one of the larger disservices Microsoft has given the world. Of course, much of the reason Bill wants you to have to officially install applications rather than just being able to run them is that it makes it easier to limit copying. Until Bill gives up on the notion that anyone who would use a free copy of an app if they could would pay the outrageously inflated price they charge for a legal copy if they could just be kept from copying it, he ain't gonna give up on installer apps, registry settings, and forcing you to click on "I accept this bogus license agreement that we all know nobody reads anyway".

[poltr1]

I think I've seen or heard those same stories. In some installations, the policy of not using thumb drives makes sense to me. It's too easy for data on a thumb drive to be accidentally taken out of a vaulted work area. These sites probably use removable hard drives that are locked up when the system is not in use. For these installations, U3 wouldn't add any value.

Where I see U3's greatest potential is with diskless workstations. There's no software to buy or install, other than what's on the thumb drive. And I'm always looking for ways to thumb my nose at Microsoft. :)

filkergem mentioned a similar, more open-source technology called PortableApps. This may take off even more so than U3.

[filkergem.livejournal.com]

Portable Applications can be built without any fancy technology. Check out http://www.portableapps.com/ for tools that will let you manipulate your Office documents on any portable memory device. I've got a Windows/Apache/MySQL/PHP/Perl environment, GNU emacs, and a number of the other applications on my 1Gig USB stick - I've been able to do some decent development on it with several different PCs.

Great prices, though!

[poltr1]

Great prices, though!

Indeed. I much prefer instant rebates to the tradiotional rebates. No sending in receipts and proof-of-purchases. No more waiting. And no more tying up my money.

[poltr1]

I looked at portableapps.com earlier today. It appears to be a more open (i.e. less proprietary) standard than U3. I also noticed that Firefox and Thunderbird are available for portableapps.

I think I'll give it a try in the coming weeks.