DataTraveler
A new month, a new flash drive, yet another small drive has landed on my desk. This time it's the U3 DataTraveler from Kingston Technology. It's very stylish and small and available in only one color schemes. This scheme is the orange/silver combination which looks rather nice. The casing is a silver colored durable, hard plastic shell with an orange centerpiece on it. Displayed on the centerpiece is the style and brand of the drive.
On the top end the drive has a loophole for the lanyard supplied with the drive. This enables you to keep it close by wearing the strap around your wrist. The USB connector is covered by a cap. A handy trick with this drive is that you can stick the cap on the loophole end of the drive so you won't loose it. Activity is indicated by the activity light on the back, the orange centerpiece is translucent to show it. There's no switch for write protect on the drive.
Upon insertion, the drive installs two volumes. One volume is engaged as CD-ROM drive and is about 3.8 MB big. The other volume is the real drive and encompasses 2 GB of space. Launchpad is located on the smaller volume to enable access to the U3 applications, but also to enable access on the bigger volume when it's locked. The contents of the smaller drive can't be erased. The Launchpad is used by U3 as a springboard to launch U3 applications from. On the next page I'll explain U3 further and leave this page to explain which applications are added and how the drive interacts with the operating system. Right now I can tell you the Launchpad looks a lot like the start menu Windows XP has and functions pretty much in the same fashion. It lists the programs already installed on the flash drive and leaves you the choice to expand the selection with more programs. A very important feature is the eject button on the menu. It allows you to safely remove the drive from the computer, instead of using the wizard Windows has in store for you. The Launchpad is designed to work on any Windows 2000 SP4 or XP computer and as such is very compatible with most systems. However it is possible that with some configurations the Launchpad fails to execute properly or even the programs loaded from the Launchpad. In such cases it's wise to compare functionality of the U3 drive on another computer. Included in the U3 bundled package are 3 trial programs: Pass2Go, ACDSee and Zinio Digital Zines. Pass2Go enables you to save your passwords and form information for various sites. ACDSee is a photo browser/editor which also allows you to easily make slideshows of your favorite pictures. Zinio Digital Zines is a digital magazine browser. It shows magazines you have subscribed on much like a real magazine and reminds me a bit of an eBook reader or adobe acrobat reader.
Of course you can download a lot more programs for your U3 enabled drive at U3.com. I was able to download and install some free software I had found at U3. Firefox along with Foxit reader were some of the must have programs you can install. Foxit reader is used to read PDF files, basically it looks and acts like adobe acrobat reader. I also installed Weatherbug, to keep track of localized weather, a notepad replacement called Editpad Lite, a digital file shredder and last but not least a sudoku puzzle game. All of these ran flawlessly on several computers I had plugged the drive in.
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