thumb drives

[fletcher]

I am considering buying my son a thumb drive for his birthday (19).  I am not even sure this is what it is called but as I am not very up on my technology but have seen this "thumb drive" referred to a few times lately.  He has a Dell laptop he uses for school.  Could anyone give me some advice on what I should buy or look for or any information.  I would ask him but I want it to be a surprise.  He did say he borrows a device from other students when he needs to but he didn't name the brand or type. Any advice on pricing, size etc. is appreciated.  Thanks.

[tenkani]

 From urbandictionary.com

THUMB DRIVE/FLASH DRIVE
A memory device that is plugged into the USB drive of a computer. A flash drive is usually about 1 1/2 to 2 inches long and can store from much more than a floppy disc.

So basically just think of it as a super floppy disk that's about the size of a child's thumb.

= =

I would suggest googling reviews of different models but from my own personal experience...

Sandisk models tend to be cheap and reliable, but are usually not the fastest drives out there.
Kingston costs a little more but are faster and very high quality.
I have one of each and they are both fine. No problems so far.

You may see some drives referred to as "U3" drives. That means that they are specially designed so that you can install software directly to them. From the reviews I've read, the U3 drives tend to be significantly slower, and the ability to install software to the U3 drive is overrated since non-U3 drives can have software installed to them as well if the software has been designed to be portable.

I'm running portable Firefox right now directly from my Kingston thumb drive.

So my advice is avoid U3 drives unless you have a compelling reason to buy one.
 
EDIT: I am curious why someone would post this under my handle on Discover Vancouver. Academe? Are you trying to be helpful again??

[fletcher]

Thanks, Tenkani, did I spell that right?

  I am also curious as to why this post ended up on DV.  I did not post there. I have posted there before and have changed my name as I was too gender specific and was getting a few gross outs but not this question. What is up with that?  Can a person not post here without it showing up on DV?  Too weird.

  But thanks, Tenkani.  Much appreciated.  I hope I can find a Kingston in Canada.  Or should I stick with a Dell product?  But I will check both out.

[fletcher]

I checked the Kingston out.  Didn't realize there would be so many models.  Can I ask which model you have and size, Tenkani?  My son uses only FireFox.  Wouldn't consider using IE.  He is in a Computer Program at school and all his classmates use laptops.

[tenkani]

Just as a caveat, I am not a techie and so not really an authority on thumb drives. Before buying my Kingston I did a lot of research on speed and reliability comparisons, but by now that research is out of date so it wouldn't hurt to do some of your own.

I bought the...
Kingston DataTraveler Elite 2GB Flash Drive (USB2.0 Portable) Model KUSBDTE/2GB
I bought it for a little over $100 (American) back in May.

2 GB is a lot of storage but I use it to hold my image/movie collection for posting on forums and it's almost full. It really depends on the type of thing he will be storing, and your budget of course.

I absolutely love my portable version of Firefox because it means I can run Firefox wherever I go (on a library computer, at a school computer lab etc.) and still use my Firefox with all my bookmarks and custom plug-ins. I also use a portable FTP app called Filezilla and I've downloaded a bunch of other portable apps (like Gimp, a Photoshop alternative) but haven't spent much time playing with them.

As far as your (and my) posts ending up on Discover Vancouver, no, that is not normal at all. In fact, it's just plain strange. A day or two ago a poster named Academe posted info from a thread here over at DV. She's also very fond of posting all my past and present DV handles over there as a not-so-subtle way to irritate me. Suffice it to say that we've had a rocky relationship. This smells like one of her stunts, but you never know.
 
 EDIT: Oh, I almost forgot. One of the selling features of my thumb drive is that it is hardware encrypted. That means it has a little brain that encrypts your data without slowing down the transfer rate. If it was having to encrypt/decrypt using software there would be slowdown.
 
 The encryption is optional, but it basically means that once enabled, you must log on to your thumb drive with a password or else the contents are completely inaccessible. I chose this model because I used to store a bunch of personal files (journal entries, financial stuff etc.) on my MP3 player and it was stolen and it worried the hell out of me      

 

[fletcher]

Thanks, again.  I will do some research and that is a good tip about the encryption capability.  

  I am rather stunned that my post ended up there as well.  I made a point of posting on DS and not DV as I am rather tired of some of the freaky people there.

  Thanks.  

[tenkani]

One of the freakiest people on DV is a moderator there.
Oh well, at least they can't read our PMs (since DV doesn't have PMs).
I love DV, but I fully acknowledge that it's a wretched hellpit full of loonies and deviants.
Between DS and DV lies the perfect online community.
 

[kingy]

i can vouch for the kingston datatraveler elite. i too have the 2 gig drive. havent had any problems with it and it is pretty fast. works like a charm and basically has made the floppy drive useless. now what can i do with all my floppy disks?