USB Thumb Drives as ... Fashion Statement?

The Fun Guy writes "The New York Times has discovered USB thumb drives: "In some cases, flash drives have suddenly become so commonplace that, as with cellphones, their owners are adding fashion touches [DNA must be on file to read] to lend them a personal identity." Apparently, the most important thing about thumb drives is not that they are cheap, fast, durable, easy to use or hold a lot of data, but that wearing one around your neck identifies you as one of the techno-congniscenti, especially if you personalize it with stickers."

Comments

Depending on where you live...

[garcia]

Depending on where you live it could be like hanging a clove of garlic around your neck or a piece of rare meat.

Even though I'm a geek if I saw a blinged out geektoy I'd still point and laugh. Since when did we want to be mainstream?

Girlie stickers

[justkarl]

Somehow this reminds me of elementary school, when all the girls you knew had these real popular pink stickers with horses and unicorns and stars and hearts all over them, and they would put them all over EVERYTHING they owned. Maybe some of these people are regressing.

What should they be called?

[waynegoode]

I hear a lot of names for these things. What should it be? In a recently rejected poll submission to Slashdot, I asked

What is it?

• Flash drive
• Thumb drive
• USB drive
• Keychain drive
• Jump drive
• Pen drive
• Memory drive
• Memory stick

I use flash drive, like the NY Times article. The Fun Guy likes thumb drive. However, I think that is a trademark. Same for jump drive. A lot of people where I work call them a memory stick--that's very confusing and a Sony trademark. USB drive can refer to hard drives also. Hmmm.......

Let's settle this (or maybe not). What do you think they should be called?

Re:What should they be called?

[Kiryat Malachi]

I like memory stick, except for the stupid Sony connection, so I generally go with flash drive or USB flash (implying drive).

Re:Pocket protectors?

[stratjakt]

That depends if you're standing in line for the Sailor Moon film festival, or whether you're using it to store your collection of emo music while you mope at the mall.

Which are the bigger losers? I've always found that the "in crowd" are lamer than the people too lame to be in the "in crowd", if you know what I'm saying.

Remember when preppy was "cool"? Everyone was running around in Polo and Vuarnet shirts? Then "urban" became cool and everyone started wearing their pants around their knees with their underpants showing?

Any ideas on security

[twfry]

I've been thinking about getting one of these and putting most of my day to day working files on it. The problem is there is some sensitive data that I need to protect somehow.

So far my best idea has been to encrypt all the files with AES or something similar and keep the encryption tool as the only non-encrypted file. This way I can access all my files anywhere but at the same time I won't worry if it's lost since the data is protected.

After hunting around TrueCrypt seems like the best option.

So, does anyone have any suggestions or experiences to share?

Thanks

Hey, wait...

[syukton]

I read this: "flash drives have suddenly become so commonplace that, as with cellphones" and it occured to me: has anyone integrated a USB flash drive into a cellphone yet? That'd make sharing contacts and address books and schedules and such pretty damn easy...

Preppy is BACK!

[Dogtanian]

Remember when preppy was "cool"? Everyone was running around in Polo and Vuarnet shirts? Then "urban" became cool and everyone started wearing their pants around their knees with their underpants showing?

Irony of ironies; as far as hip-hop, the ultimate "urban" music is concerned, the current fashionable look *is* "preppy".

Re:And remember guys... size DOES matter

[v1]

I got a JetFlash 512mb as a gift last year and used it to death, but ran out of space storing service apps and soforth on it. It was also physically large, which was a minus. I recently replaced it with a SanDisk Cruzer mini 1gb, and love it. It's very small and fits into USB ports even when they're stuffed up in a "port cave" on the back of a computer. The JetFlash was so wide and thick that it often was blocked by the other device plugged into the adjacent (to the side OR top) usb port.

There is one disadvantage to today's larger capacity drives - they're ("high speed") USB 2.0. Now this SOUNDS like an advantage, but unfortunately this also means they "register" on the USB bus as requiring power, and as such they cannot be plugged into unpowered hubs such as those on keyboards. (macs mainly) You have to plug them into a powered hub or directly into the computer. The speed increase you get is not necessarily worth it, as flash memory is still quite slow and you only realize maybe a 2x speed increase at the added inconvenience of having to climb under the desk to plug it in.