U3 platform takes aim at the Smart USB flash drive market
Well, the storage media market is heating up here as Kingston Technology, Memorex and Verbatim all sign on to the U3 platform for Smart USB Flash drives, a standard that competes with the Drive Alliance standard supported by Lexar and Samsung. We're not gonna whip up a batch of popcorn and expect to entertain ourselves via a live feed of the battle or anything, but it will be interesting to see if the challenging U3 can take over. It promises a platform that will allow a USB drive to store not just data, but also a user's applications and PC settings. Programs will be able to be launched directly from the portable media itself (which would pretty much blow Iomega's Active Disk away, likely). The advantage going for the Drive Alliance spec is that it involves no royalty charges, whereas U3 will charge USB drive makers (but not software companies or host computer makers) royalties to use the technology. We'll leave them to duke it out in the marketplace — or maybe a good thumb wrestle is in order for the title?
