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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 –
10/26/2005 |
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Flash drives 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. 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 last year 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. But now
another technology has been 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. I’ll be doing a full review of this upcoming. You can
also use flash drives for copying and transporting MP3 files. Flash
drives are a great, cheap and simple technology you need to be using today. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2005 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html (509)624-7230 |
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