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

And remember guys... size DOES matter

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm talking about disk capacity of course.

Re:And remember guys... size DOES matter

[EvilCowzGoMoo]

Size doesn't matter, its what stickers you put on it!

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.

especially if you personalize it with stickers

[Tumbleweed]

Awesome!

Anyone know where I can find some really small VTEC stickers?

Re:especially if you personalize it with stickers

[Anonymous Coward]

I just want a big "Type R" sticker and maybe some neon.

Re:especially if you personalize it with stickers

[Tumbleweed]

Go ahead, laugh. Everyone laughed when Orville Wright invented his brother Wilbur...

Re:especially if you personalize it with stickers

[daniil]

Stickers? Gah. Mine's got a whole Civic stuck to it! OK, so i do need a very long cable to actually use it (most public libraries don't like it if you bring along a Civic, not even one without an engine), but at least i'm way more fashionable than any of you wannabes.

Re:especially if you personalize it with stickers

[eric_brissette]

As long I can make it sound like a coffee can full of farting bumblebees, I don't care what it looks like.

Pocket protectors?

[erick99]

Does wearing a thumb drive around one's neck identify you as part of a "in" crowd or as belonging to the pocket protector geek crowd?

-erick

Re:Pocket protectors?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I see you it makes you part of the "avoid like the plague" crowd. Puts you right up there with guys who wear their beepers/cell phones/PDA on their belt buckle. If you must carry all that crap then do yourself a fashion favor and buy cargo pants.

Re:Pocket protectors?

[WormholeFiend]

well then, in the unlikely case that a member of the opposite sex asks you if that is a thumbdrive, just take an air of mystery and state vaguely: "No, that's my encryption security key".

Re:Pocket protectors?

[Just Some Guy]

I think it marks you as part of the "choke me with the digital garrote around my neck until I give you the electronic device containing all my stuff, and here have my iPod too" crowd. Think I'll have to pass on this one.

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?

Re:Pocket protectors?

[Wiktor Kochanowski]

I'd have thought the correct answer would be "No, I am just happy to see you".

Re:Pocket protectors?

[gotgenes]

"I'm the Gatekeeper. Are you the (Encryption) Keymaster?"

Re:Pocket protectors?

[Misch]

I have gone some days wearing my thumbdrive on a lanyard around my neck at a college campus with a large population of women, and some days without. The number of women who have approached me to ask me out on a date in either case has remained a constant 0.

On the other hand, while wearing one, I had a woman come up to me and ask for help with her artificial intelligence homework.

Re:Pocket protectors?

[pjt33]

...a college campus with a large population of women, and some days without

Do you have any theories as to why the population of women on campus fluctuates so wildly?

Re:Pocket protectors?

[gstoddart]

Does wearing a thumb drive around one's neck identify you as part of a "in" crowd or as belonging to the pocket protector geek crowd?

It actually puts you into a very disturbing segment of people in between ravers and geeks. Unfortunately, both groups will shun you unless you also add a soother and a strand of low-voltage LEDs to appease them. :-P

Cheers

Re:Pocket protectors?

[Mr. Slippery]

Cargo pants are out of style.

Getting fashion advice from /., now that's out of style...

Re:Pocket protectors?

[tkg]

You *could* tell her it's your USB dongle and ask if she has an available port.

No DNA Sample Required

[romper]

C|Net is carrying the same NYT story here.

Re:No DNA Sample Required

[FortKnox]

I'd think someone cool enough to use a term "DNA Sample" for registration would be cool enough to know about bugmenot (they even have a firefox extension!).

Re:No DNA Sample Required

[maxume]

bugmenot is great, but lots of sites are running active campaigns against it. It is useless on the Washington Post. I think the NYT blocks them too.

Re:No DNA Sample Required

[wheany]

Or, you could register, login once and it will never bug you anymore. If you don't like giving your email address, use mailinator.

My one request for future story submitters: just say (registration required), the jokes about dna samples, firstborn babies and eternal souls are not that funny.

Re:No DNA Sample Required

[drinkypoo]

I recently visited bugmenot and tried about 20 or 30 of their nyt logins before I gave up in disgust and created one myself. I did mark all the bad logins as bad, and I did add my login to the database, but either people are not marking them bad, or they are not being removed when they are marked bad. bugmenot is pretty useless, at least for nyt, though the first three times I used it the first login it gave me worked.

Re:No DNA Sample Required

[FortKnox]

keep upgrading. With every upgrade comes a better bugmenot. Before my latest update, I had to go through about 6 logins before I got a hit. This time it was first time in.

This is new..

[The Kow]

Stickers as a ticket to elitism. Who knew?

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?

Re:Depending on where you live...

[kidgenius]

I'm a geek if I saw a blinged out geektoy I'd still point and laugh.

Yes, that may be so, but if instead it was a blinged out geek girl, then you'd go a-runnin'.

Drivil

[Kaduco]

Hain't never seen nobody wear one around their neck. Generally on keychains, but even then, I've NEVER seen one with stickers. What, why, huh, WHO?

"Durable"?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had 3 from different manufacturers fail in 2 months. Both were heavily used and on my keychain often being bounced around in my pockets.

Didn't see any physical damage, so don't know what happened to them.

Anyone have a reliable one?

Re:"Durable"?

[Lxy]

Which manufacturers?

I like the Sandisk cruzer mini. It's small, has a lanyard, and 3 multicolor caps. The only problem I've had with it is when I pulled it out while data was being written to it and I had to reformat it. If the light is blinking, don't pull it out! :-) If I could post a picture of mine, I would. It looks like it's been through a war, and it works flawlessly. Oh, and did I mention they're the cheapest ones out there?

Sony Microvaults are complete crap, and Sony finally stopped making them. Lexar Jump drives are rumored to be poorly made, but I have no personal knowledge. Simpletech Bonzais work well, but they have a really ugly shape and size. Our users don't seem to care for them, even though they are reliable.

As the drives are getting more popular, they're becoming cheaper. Hopefully the manufacturers don't sacrifice quality to compensate.

Re:"Durable"?

[dslbrian]

Lexar Jump drives are rumored to be poorly made, but I have no personal knowledge.

I've gone from a Lexar Jump drive to a Sandisk Micro (not mini). The Lexar was pretty poorly made, the case was plastic and the loop for clipping it on things was also plastic. After a few months of use the loop was starting to crack and I found it had corrupted data one day, so I upgraded to the micro. (once the flash starts to get corrupted I figured its time to get something else..)

The Sandisk Micro is nearly the ideal case and form factor. Its entirely enclosed in a metal can, with a large metal loop at the end for clipping to keychain. Surrounding that is a clear rubber plastic layer for absorbing impact. Bright (very bright) blue LED light on the end when its plugged in and transferring data. Very small (smaller than any other one I've seen) such that I keep it clipped on the keychain all the time. Cheap too - $36 for 256mb from newegg ...

Re:"Durable"?

[geekoid]

"If the light is blinking, don't pull it out! :-)"

yes, the will be fixed with the Cherry 2005 model.

It's funny, but only if you know bad sci-fi

Sure... now it becomes popular

[FortKnox]

Yes, once I'm done with school and college geek becomes chic. Its like some bad dream. The stuff I used to get beatup for now gets you the hot cheerleader. This is some really evil irony.

Re:Sure... now it becomes popular

[stratjakt]

Trust me, noone who wears a USB dongle around their neck is getting the hot cheerleader. They'd be lucky to get the ugly homosexual.

And the word "irony" doesn't mean what you think it does.

Re:Sure... now it becomes popular

[PureCreditor]

> Trust me, noone who wears a USB dongle around their neck is getting the hot cheerleader. They'd be lucky to get the ugly homosexual.

In the all-encompassing Slashdot community, derogatory jokes against minorities of sexual orientation is un-called for.

I hate subject lines.

[Chess_the_cat]

I don't remember people thinking I was too cool when I was walking around with a floppy around my neck. I guess the secret is the stickers.

Re:I hate subject lines.

[servognome]

Maybe you should try it now, wear a 5.25" floppy around your neck and call it "retro"

old school

[Moonlapse]

Im still kicking it old school with a grey 32 meg drive on my keychain

Re:old school

[stratjakt]

I've got underpants made out of punchcards, with vaccuum tubes as buttons!

I've got an idea....

[apoplectic]

Why not wear a 4Meg thumb drive as a RETRO fashion statement? Perhaps there will even be a market for a 4K drive in the future. Of course, to be properly retro, the 4K drive might have to be as big as your arm....

I have two

[WormholeFiend]

One for each crowd I hang out with:

1) Thumbdrive with an Apple logo
2) Thumbdrive with a Type R logo

Re:Special...

[nizo]

I made my ThumbDrive look like a Human Ear. That way, people know I am not voting for Kerry...

You are voting for Mike Tyson instead?

How to amaze family and friends

[pubjames]

Set up a VNC server and put a client on a USB thumb drive, configured to display full screen. Then just plug your USB drive into your friends computer, double click and watch their faces as they see their windows machine instantly converted to a linux one...

Re:How to amaze family and friends

[Anonymous Coward]

And then hear them go: "Man, Linux is really a lot slower than Windows. I think I'll stick with Windows."

Around the neck

[Mateito]

Wearing one around your neck identifies you as one of the techno-congniscenti.

No, it makes you look like a dick. The same way that you look when you walk around with your mobile-phone cord permanently wedged in your ear, whether you are on the phone or not.

Personally, I hate having anything hanging around my neck. My office just issued new ID swipe tags which they supplied with a rediculously short neck cord. (I find it really uncomfortable to have a plastic card banging against my nipples all day. Its really distracting.)

Those little retracting belt thingies are the best, even though they tend to die in the hands of a bored 3 year old.

Re:Around the neck

[upside]

I'm really uncomfortable with the words "banging against my nipples" conjuring a certain type of imagery, then realising that it written by a guy... :( I bet you did that on purpose. Damn you.

Re:Around the neck

[stratjakt]

It depends how the PC is put together.

Basically what happens is the +5 and ground get shorted.

So the PC can have electronics to detect the short and disable the USB port - more likely in an expensive machine, or a server.

Or, the PC can detect the short and power down, which calls for cheaper electronics.

Or, the PC can do nothing about it, the +5 rail will suck juice until the PSU shuts itself down, hopefully before your mobo melts.

My motherboard will shut down (supposedly safely) if the power rails fluctuate too far out of range.

Almost any PSU will shut down (usually safely) if you short the rails together. Try it! It's fun.

Re:Around the neck

[pete-classic]

This is slashdot. And you assumed a post was written by a woman?

Anyway, guys nipples are sensitve too. Don't be so suburban.

-Peter

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.

Re:Girlie stickers

[dykofone]

You mean the Lisa Frank stickers?

Oh shit, I just disturbed myself by knowing that.

Re:Girlie stickers

[Tassach]

You can know what Lisa Frank stickers are and still affirm your manhood, simply by stating that you have a daughter in elementary school!

Fatherhood is the ultimate affirmation of your masculinity.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

USB drive Failures

[Kaduco]

Recently covered these things in a class. Apparently after a few thousand writes they fail rather magnificently. The drive has to keep track of where it's written, and try to write uniformly over the less-used sectors. Learning that made me a little more cautious about how often I use mine (I know it won't make a real difference, but still). Guess that and the speed difference compared to a hard disk (which is MUCH faster) means we won't see these revolutionizing large (GB) data storage nor replacing hard drives.

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:What should they be called?

[Lxy]

I call them USB flash drives. It's universal enough that just about everyone knows what you're talking about. Jump drives, thumb drives, pen drives, etc are all TMs, and since there is no clear leader in the USB flash drive market you can't universalize it just yet.

You're all a bunch of girly-men!!!!

[Thud457]

I wear a ST-506 on a 3/4", chrome-plated chain around my neck! **BLING* *BLING**!!!

not cool enough

[justforaday]

I'm not cool enough to have a thumb drive. I think I might have a broken USB dongle somewhere though. Would that make me cool? Or would I be better off wearing a parallel port dongle around my neck instead?

Karma already maxed, I'm bored -- blogsafe link!

[Buran]

Blogsafe version (get yer blogsafe NYT links at http://nytimes.blogspace.com/genlink -- why Slashdot doesn't know about this yet I don't know)

Win9x

[Nexzus]

I've found that mine needs drivers for Win9x, so I need to keep them right there in the root of the drive.

Re:Win9x

[micromoog]

Yeah, I used to keep my DOS CD-ROM drivers on a CD-ROM near the computer.

Okay, let me get this straight...

[foxtrot]

I have a "blueberry" cellphone that can browse the web on my belt. On the other side, I've got a RIM pager. Also on the belt is a Nite-Ize pouch with a Leatherman Wave and a mini-Maglite. On my wrist is a watch that not only tells time, it's got a compass an altimeter built in. My class ring says "Georgia Institute of Technology." I've got a SecurID token, a military surplus can opener, and the platter separator from an ST-225 hard disk on my keyring-- which itself was vendor swag from HP. ...and you're trying to tell me I need a USB flash widget so people can tell I'm a geek?

Flash Drive

[rkhalloran]

It's a flash-memory chip on a USB plug, call it what it is.

Re:Flash Drive

[rpdillon]

"Hey, where did you get that flash-memory chip on a USB plug?"

"Oh, over at Newegg.com. They have a great flash-memory chip on a USB plug selection. I got this flash-memory chip on a USB plug because it has 512 MB or memory and was only $40. Pretty sweet, huh?"

Thanks, but no thanks. I think I'll stick with "flash drive".

Thumb Drives... as bling!

[lothar97]

I'm not going to wear my thumb drive until some cool hiphop star like Nelly of 50 Cent starts sporting their own thumb drive as bling. Then it stops being "geeky" and starts being "cool" or "badas$$".

I, of course, did not use my iPod out of the house until 50 Cent was brave enough to wear his in a video.

Well I'm sure glad they invented them ...

[bushboy]

I was getting tired of wearing my bling bling CD necklace ...

...and cost.

[EtherAlchemist]

1GB is the biggest I've seen and the best deal on that is at newegg. $84 is hard to beat for a 1GB stick.

Remarkable how much these have dropped in price, it wasn't very long ago that 1GB flash was up around 200-300 bucks! I remember thinking I got a deal when I bought a 64MB for $20 a year and a half ago.

Re:...and cost.

[masoncooper]

I got my PQI stick in last week and it's amazing! It's fast enough to compile off of and 1GB means it'll be a LONG time before you run out. The coolest part is that it come with a wallet insert so for the thickness of about 2.5 credit cards you can carry 2 sticks everywhere you go. Someone mentioned that Tiger Direct was sold out. I got mine from Surplus Computers, does anyone know why these cards have taken such a steep drop in price?

techno-congniscenti?

[macshune]

does a mispelling of "cognoscente" mean that you're also a member of the techno-illiterati?:)

Re:techno-congniscenti?

[joranbelar]

You're both half-right - it'd be congnoscenti (plural) ;)

Re:techno-congniscenti?

[ZooDog]

I believe it's cognoscenti.

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

Re:Any ideas on security

[Xibby]

I only keep a few important documents on my flash drive. Since I have to move between Windows and Linux (and occasionally Macs...) I have multiple binaries of GnuPG on the drive.

Ideally, you want some way to write directly into the encrypted file. I'm not aware of anything to do that myself...yet. Only started looking.

For now I just encrypt and decrypt a zip file (gpg -c --cipher-algo AES256 file.zip). The obvious flaw here is that yes...you can use an undelete program to retrieve the unencrypted zip file off the drive (I've successfully done so.)

My goal was to generally make the drive un interesting to someone who finds it. Unless they have some knowledge of how things work, they're either going to open up the text file with my contact info or wipe the drive clean because double clicking on these .gpg files doesn't do anything...

What I'd like to do is throw an encrypted file system image on the thing. That way only a previous version of the encrypted file system image could be recovered. Until I find something cross platform that doesn't require software to be installed on the host computer, that just isn't an option though. My advise is just don't put anything on it that you don't want someone else to see. Or get a piercing and attach your flash drive by a chain. Maybe you'll start an Office Punk trend...

iomega usb thumb drives SUCKS

[PhiberOptix]

i dont know (or care) about stilish thumb drives, but one advice >>

dont get near those crap iomega usb thumb drives. Our ti manager thought they looked cool, and bought about a dozen of them. 3 months later, all of them were broken and were replaced by cheaper and better ones made by kingston.

JOGR 1GB...

[Physics Dude]

This is the best thumb drive I've seen. It's waterproof, shockproof (encapsulated in superball material so it can take 1000G's of abuse). ;)

Brand: JOGR
Capacity: 1 GB
Interface: USB 2.0
Price: $105 shipped ;)

I love this thing!

Re:JOGR 1GB...

[wmaker]

shockproof (encapsulated in superball material

it doubles as a bouncy ball?! I'm on it.

Nothing new...

[EmbeddedJanitor]

A while ago the geek fashion statement was to hang an HP48 pouch from your belt. Before that, a slide rule in a leather case.

For the EE, wearing a static wristband...

These fad people annoy the hell out of me

[aardwolf204]

Wearing one around your neck identifies you as one of the techno-congniscenti.

Riiight. This fad is for those who think they're 'in the know' because they picked up some skillz by watched their admin right click my computer and click properties. The crowd that is just dangerous enough to delete their registry. And now they're cool because they keep their super leet document around their necks saying "Look at me, I'm important, I've got 'my documents' around my neck!". Nothing annoys me more than these people. Its like that ITT Tech commercial with the 40 year old PT Cruiser driving soccer mom got a degree as an "IT Professional" by "inventing a database" in Access and is expecting to make $80,000 a year!

Someone please meta-moderate the Slashdot RSS feed so I only see intelligent stories.

iPods

[fsterman]

I am amazed no one has mentioned that 40gb portable hard disk- the iPod. Screw files, I move computer images to the far flung and scattered computers at my work. Many have only 56k modems, which makes it nuts to do every damn patch over. At some places I need to make a custom image on the spot, I give the CD's to the staff and use my iPod to do image computers while I'm there.

Really USB thumb drives are already old. Cheap? Yes, but only until HD prices come down enough. Not cheap when compared to 1 and 2 Gig ones! For an iPod it is $399/40= $9.9, or ten bucks a gig. $10/Gig vs $100/Gig now that's kicking Flash drives ass! And if it's style you want 4Gig iPod Mini is $250 is still $62/Gig.

Why?

[ericdano]

Why get a flash drive when you can do the same thing with your iPod? You can kill two birds with one stone.

Re:Why?

[ericdano]

Ha!

I've been through 3 USB Flash drives. Durable is not something I'd use in a sentence with Flash Drives.

Ha!

[multiplexo]

but that wearing one around your neck identifies you as one of the techno-congniscenti, especially if you personalize it with stickers.

Ha! I mock your attempt at trying to look like one of the techno-cognoscenti by wearing a thumb drive around your neck. I wear an EMC Symmetrix around my neck so I can store several terabytes of data. Admittedly this has made certain things (eating, going to the bathroom, leaving the data center) difficult but when my friends come over they're all impressed at how 133t I am!

People are already doing this...sadly

[eseiat]

Here is an article from C|Net about people who are doing that very thing. The novelty factor of using a cell phone from 1985 is almost as long as the battery life would be for one of those phones. After that, you are just stuck with 10lbs of digital obscurity and some brain tumors to boot.

A recommendation

[karniv0re]

While we're doing thumb drive reviews, I might offer my review:

I bought a 16MB Memory Bar for $20 a few years back. Since then, it's been through the wash twice (fully submerged), gets dropped often, kicked around, and still works. The only thing that's going to keep this thing from working is if I loose it (which, with my luck, is very likely).

Highly recommended.

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".

oops!

[torpor]

1GB means it'll be a LONG time before you run out.

hah hah! you haven't been around the computer industry long, have you sonny boy .. ;)