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Flash Drives
Written by: Michael Mardings
Handy, small and tight.
Be gone you evil 3.5 inch floppy drive! Be gone. I declare you banished into the abyss. In using the computer since the age of large 5¼ inch floppy drives, I've noticed that the means of moving data from Point A to Point B has gotten progressively easier. First, it was annoying disks; then occasionally, you'd burn a CD-ROM and finally, you have flash drives.
There are a million flash drives of some sort or another out there. What the hell is the difference between them Why should you get them and what good are they?
First, the easy question. What do you do with them? Basically, you can store your data on them like you used to carry from one place to another on your diskettes. Just pop the flash drive into a diskette and you're done. They are small, convenient and can be so large that you can actually bring your entire computer with you. Well, not literally, but if you use Quicken, Microsoft WORD and a few other applications you can stick your data right on there.
I checked out two different types of these drives. The first that I looked at was the PQI Intelligent Stick, and basically, it's ridiculously small and very light. I kept it in my wallet and it was so small that I didn't even notice it was there. They come in 64, 128 and 512 sizes. Some tech magazines will quote how fast they are compared to other ones and bytes per second. To me, it moved all of my data in a few seconds and I was happy. I even copied my entire Eudora and ran my email off from it. It worked well and I loved the idea of how compact it is. If I haven't mentioned it before, it's so compact you wouldn't want it to be any smaller or you'd lose it. It's already as light and as big as an extra long fingernail.
The other one I looked at was the Simpletech Bonzai. It's not as small, but it's really not a drive. Well, it is, but it's not. Okay, it's confusing. Basically, it's a Secure Digital card built into a USB reader that is made as tight as possible. The advantage of this, and it's a big advantage, is that it's expandable. You can bring 20 little Secure Digital cards with you. The disadvantage is that it's a little bit bigger than the intelligent sticks. It's not massively big, but it won't fit in my wallet as easy.
So how do they compare? First of all, they seem to be representative of the two types of flash drives. One is really tight and compact and self-contained; the other is basically a USB driver, which is the basic difference. I'm not going to compare speeds because basically it seemed to me to be roughly the same. The difference is, if you want to go with expandability, go with the Bonzai. If you want something as compact as humanly possibly, go with the intelligent stick.
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