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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 Wednesday, September 29,
2004 |
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Lead: In the classic James Bond
movies, he always had hi-tech gadgets to use in his spy work. Today Frank
Delaney talks about a high tech device James Bond would be envious of. The death
of the floppy disk – part 3 – The new James Bond technology for
file transfer For the
past several years one of the changes in computer architecture is
what’s known as the USB or universal serial bus ports. Today most
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. 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 your standard windows interface to copy files to it at
high speed. Then you just pop it out of your computer, and 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 mini-cruzer
flash drive at Costco a few weeks ago almost as an impulse item, displayed up
there at the front of the store near the other impulse items like beef jerky and candy. This
little device stores 256 Megs of data, and was $ 39.95. You plug it into any
pc using Windows, It’s
pretty amazing to be able to walk up to a pc, Ala James Bond, pop this little
cool looking burnished aluminum drive into a USB port, and see the light on
it turn green – meaning it’s ready to copy data at up to 15
megabytes per second. Then you pop it out and walk off with up to 256 Megs of
data – the equivalent of 177 floppy disks. But
what’s more amazing is that these drives come in 512 Mb and 1 Gigabytes
versions – in the exact same tiny size – less than 3” long,
¾” wide, and about 3/8” thick, with a usb
connector on one end and a light device on the other. In
addition to the mini-cruzer drives, Sandisk makes a micro version of this drive about half
the size, which is targeted towards music lovers, and which works with Sandisk’s own tiny MP3 player. Sandisk also makes a Titanium version - titanium-coated casing
which is virtually indestructible, as evidenced in their advertising
literature showing an elephant’s foot on their drive. The
Titanium drive comes with 2 other software programs. One is called Pocket
Cache which automatically backs up changed files on your pc to itself. The other
program is called CruzerSync, allows you to
transfer all your Microsoft Outlook information – emails, contacts,
notes and calendar, and access them at anytime from any windows pc in the
world, turning any pc into your own Outlook station – at the office, at
home, school, or in an internet café. So as we
bid goodbye to our old friend the floppy disk, we welcome the flash drive
technologies which replace it. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2004 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html (509)624-7230 |
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