STC Usability SIG Newsletter
Usability Interface

Tooling Around

By Gloria McConnell

If you aren’t necessarily up on the latest hardware helpers, take note. One of the coolest things I’ve seen lately is a tiny USB (universal serial bus) storage device called a USB "pen drive" or "memory key." It’s a keychain-sized USB flash memory storage device.

How it works

The USB pen drive simply plugs into a USB port on your computer. Your computer detects it as a removable drive. Voilá! Easy data transportation from one computer to another when a network connection is not available. The following figure shows one connection method. Other pen drives plug directly into the port (no little docking station or cable needed). The pen drive acts just like a floppy diskette in terms of accepting and transferring files. One big difference, though: depending on the model, USB pen drives hold from 8 megabytes to 1 gigabyte of data. That high end is equivalent to about 700 floppies, folks.

Bye-bye, floppy

It’s pretty easy to see the future of 3.5-inch floppies (which generally hold 1.44 megabytes). They will son be going the way of 5.25-inch floppies. Dell already announced in February 2003 a phase-out plan for floppy drives on some lines of their computers. It’s just a matter of time until our trusty floppy drive is a relic of the past. Maybe we can recycle our floppies into coasters? Modern art? Armor for battle in meetings?

Features and more

Many pen manufacturers are doing glitzy things in hopes that they will stand out in the crowd. They are offering the devices with everything from MP3 playback features to built-in cameras. One vendor is offering their pen drive with fingerprint biometric privacy capability. The MP3 playback capability may be one of the most compelling. PenPower Technology offers the WeWa MP3 Play, a USB storage device that can store a PowerPoint presentation and accompanying music. WeWa has a tiny liquid crystal display for browsing tracks, an audio input jack, and a rechargeable battery.

For more information, see:

• PC World, "What Can You Squeeze into a USB Pen Drive?," November 2002 
• PenDrive "intro" site
• Storage Supersite, "Say Goodbye to 3.5-inch Floppy Disks," February 2003

FYI. Because of the high storage capacity on these devices, some organizations are restricting or prohibiting use of the device by employees for fear that their intellectual property will be exposed to misuse on an unsecured device or stolen by disgruntled/unethical employees.

This article is reprinted from the June 2003 issue of Rough Draft, newsletter of the Phoenix Chapter, with only minor corrections.