U3 launches platform for flash drives

The U3 platform we talked about back in March saw its official birth today, with Verbatim and Memorex the first companies to roll out devices based on the spec, as demoed at, um, Demo (you just know someone had a eureka moment over naming that conference). Kingston and SanDisk will follow suit and all four makers will ship the U3-based drives on October 15 (for some ballpark figures — Memorex's 256MB will go for $30, up to $180 for a 2GB version). The deal is supposed to be that you can carry around a "complete workspace" on your USB drive, geared towards mobile users or those who have to share PCs frequently (and yes, U3 is Windows only at this point). Trouble is, applications have to modified to run from the drives — not to mention the storage limitation factor — so it's hard to imagine this being more attractive to most power users than, say, throwing your laptop in your bag. Still, this will probably find a market among folks like students who face the prospect of computer labs, or the light user who doesn't want to bring an entire computer to the next family reunion. Us? We've already had our notebooks implanted, thanks.

[Gleb Serbin @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

there isnt that big of a market for these things but i can see em holding up a company for a while i guess...seems like for most serious computer users carrying a laptop would be much more useful and practical

[Grandpa @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

U3 kicks U2's ass. Don't even bother with U1 anymore and U4 is years away from the market.

[eltrentomagnifico @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Ive been booting into linux from a flash drive on school computers to get around limitations they set on us.

Under their rules, we can't even right click in Internet Explorer.

First off, woah, second off, IE? Yeah, Flash drive for me, with a 1GB Flash drive you can get a surprising amount of Files, I had my entire distro of Flonix, and a good 500MB of songs and all the applications to play them. flash drive systems could be the best solution for portability in the future.

I can see options like this becoming very popular, at least now theres a standard to work off of.

:)

[Saffy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Yeah, I've always felt like I was missing something with this whole concept. I've had a 1gb Lexar Jumpdrive for quite a while now, and run programs off of it in a situation similar to #3. I don't boot from Linux, but run Firefox, Abiword and a few other odds and ends to get around the stupid restrictions of campus computers.

So long as a program is small enough to fit on the drive, and the drive and connection is fast enough, a program should run right? Why do we need a standard or spec. to do this?

[Alexander @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

Flonix sucks. Get DSL, and get you some Debian action!

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

Don't let the 50MB size fool you. You can download "DSL" applications to extend it way past that. or you can keep it that size, and load it into RAM--think about how responsive that desktop will be.

[Alexander @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

And I forgot to mention that DSL will run from a CD, with all the basic stuff (browser, text editor, mail client) built in with no downloading required. So even older computers will boot it, provided you can boot from a CD. And for the computers that don't boot from USB, you can use your HD as a storage drive for all your extensions when you boot off the CD.

[gr8dude @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

I've been doing this for a long time now, using this tool:
http://www.dekart.com/products/file_disk_encryption/private_disk/

- I get a _fixed_ disk
- I get the _same_ disk letter
- I install my programs there and use them wherever I feel like using them [of course, not any app is portable]

More details are available here:
http://www.dekart.com/support/howto/howto-portable-software/

So, nothing to see here, move along... They're just creating a new specification which will in turn create even more compatibility problems. What are they doing?

Could someone point out some real advantages?

[rice @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

puppy linux is also another free option. it's tiny and works well on flash drives.

[lesleos @ Dec 19th 2005 1:25AM]

I highly recommend this small app available for FREE during 30 daus from www.U3.com:

DmailerSync allows you to easily and securely (AES 128-bit encryption) SYNCHRONIZE and BACKUP the entire content of your Outlook mailbox (emails, attachments, folders, calendar, contacts, tasks, notes) plus ALL your personal files (Office documents, video & audio files, Internet Explorer favourites etc.) with any U3 smart Drives (any brand).

Then you can access, edit and restore those synchronized data from any windows PC, even if Outlook is not pre-installed on it!
You can even SEND and RECEIVE emails securely from your device in a few clicks.

And when you're back, DmailerSync synchronizes all of your changes back to your home or office computer like you had never been gone.

My advice: go for the Lifetime version at $59.95 with all the future update/upgrade of the product for free. At this price, with this quality, it's a bargain! By the way, I tried their hotline and got a useful answer in no time!