U3 Smart Drives

[hamradio]

http://www.u3.com

Its a pretty neat system type thing for U3 devices comes pre installed on selected USB drives.  Check it out and see what you think. 

[mouser]

very interesting idea.  i can see that being quite useful.

i know the general issue of being able to move your "working set of docs and settings and preferences" around between machines is a very hot area of research in ms labs and similar companies, and i do expect it to be something that is ubiquitous in the future.

[hamradio]

Yup, the one I saw in action had open office installed on it for one of the products installed.  U3 Anti-Virus was also installed on it.

[f0dder]

What's so revolutionary about these drives? How are they different from any other USB pendrive with software on it?

[mouser]

correct me if i'm wrong but i think this is all about the software.  they may be marketing it as a hardware-software combo, but i'm guessing it's just a standard usb pendrive with special software.

[nevf]

U3 includes its own software that lets software developers (like me) tailor their apps to run on USB drives.  Nothing ever gets saved on the PC, so for example the Registry isn't touched. It also provides the ability to control licensing from the little I've read. There is another player coming into this space soon. All good stuff IMO.

[Hirudin]

I've got one of these drives, it's a pretty cool idea, but I haven't put any additional software on it yet. A couple pieces of software you can put onto the drive is a self-contained Firefox (version ~1.01.5.0.1) and FirebirdThunderbird.

When you insert the drive into the computer, it'll add 2 drive letters (1 for the U3 stuff, 1 for the files), it also adds an icon to the system tray. Clicking the system tray icon opens a start-like-menu that has the various programs that you have. It could be very useful, but so far I've only used the menu to open the drive in explorer. It's also has security/encryption that could offer protection if you loose your drive or something.

[edit]I'm actually editing this post using the newest Firefox available (running from my U3 drive). Pretty cool![/edit]

[Hirudin]

BTW: I've edited the post above this one a couple times.

I took a couple screenshots of the U3 icon and menu, here they are...




Here you can see the only button I use ("Explore U3 Drive") that saves me the time of trying to figure out which drive letter the flash was assigned (very useful for shared computers). Also, my drive came with Thunderbird installed, though I've never used it.


PS so I've finially tried screenshot captor... It's awesome!

[brotherS]

I've got one of these drives, it's a pretty cool idea, but I haven't put any additional software on it yet. A couple pieces of software you can put onto the drive is a self-contained Firefox (version ~1.01.5.0.1) and FirebirdThunderbird.

When you insert the drive into the computer, it'll add 2 drive letters (1 for the U3 stuff, 1 for the files), it also adds an icon to the system tray. Clicking the system tray icon opens a start-like-menu that has the various programs that you have. It could be very useful, but so far I've only used the menu to open the drive in explorer.

-Hirudin (February 08, 2006, 03:08 PM)

Hmm, I got all that (excluding the start-like-menu) with my regular USB stick too... I hope we see some real U3 improvements soon