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.