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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Thursday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week –
03/23/2006 |
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Flash drives continue to excite
the pc industry more than flash dance excited moviegoers
.... Probably
the most exciting technology to emerge in the pc world these past few years
have been USB Flash Drive storage devices. For the
past several years one of the best changes in computer architecture is
what’s known as the USB or universal serial bus ports. The older
generation of pc’s used two types of ports – or portals- to communicate with devices like
printers – in which data transmitted in either
single or parallel streams
– slowly. Today most computer devices, printers,
mice, and particularly scanners and cameras – now
connect via the USB ports on your new computer. USB ports are already in their 2nd
generation, with many machines that came with Windows 98 on them having USB
1.0 ports, and computers with Windows XP having the new 2.0 ports, and
usually these ports now are on the front of your computer, for easy access. Dell
computer has stopped manufacturing computers with parallel and serial ports
anymore. The new
technology in file transfer and backup is what as known as USB flash drives,
tiny little memory plug-in drives
about the size of a stick of gum that plug right into one of your USB
ports, and you use windows
explorer to copy files to it at high speed. Then you just pop it out of your
computer, plug it into another
computer and copy files from the flash drive to the other computer. Or you
give it to someone to use on their home computer, or maybe you mail or ship
it to someone. I bought
a SanDisk 256
Meg flash drive at Costco a year
ago for $ 39.95. You plug it into any pc using Windows, XP, ME, or 2000, and
you don’t need any drivers – it’s straight plug and play.
The company does provide a driver for windows 98 machines. It also can be
used on Apple Macs. Today you can get a one gig flashdrive for around $ 80, and the storage
capacity now goes up to 4 gigs. I used to
always carry a portable computer with me in my daily work – now
I’ve lightened up by several pounds and just carry a couple flash drives
. You see, the purpose of my carrying a portable was so I could access
programs that I needed. It was either carry a portable, which weighed several
pounds, or carry dozens of floppy disks. Now everything I need fits on a 1
Gig Flashdrive. And there’s
another USB Flash drive technology introduced which allows you to carry
the equivalent of your own pc desktop and your email program – on a
flash drive – so that you can plug it into virtually any pc – and
see and use your own familiar desktop for emails and document editing. When
you unplug it – it erases all tracks from the computer you used- and
when you plug it back into your own computer – it synchronizes
everything you did with your desktop computer. This
technology is called Migo, and it’s available on the web at www.migosoftware.com
for a free trial. You can
also use flash drives for copying and transporting MP3 files and graphics
files. . Flash
drives are a great, cheap and simple technology you need to be using today. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2006 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html (509)624-7230 |
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