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Is the U3 Smart Drive Encryption Any Good?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the is-the-value-added-truly-added-value dept.

Carlos asks: "I was searching encryption software for USB pen drives, and came across the U3 Smart Drive platform which offers portability and privacy through software and hardware. There are already several well-known hardware manufacturers offering U3 Smart Drives. Do they are really better than a plain USB drive plus encryption software such as TrueCrypt or it's just marketing hype?"

2 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Read this thread from last night. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Too bad the rep was a sexist jerk.

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=194476&cid=159 38653

    But Sweetie Darling, U3 smart devices DO NOT install anything on the host computer. No special drivers, no special sauce... in fact our certification program (which EVERY application sold through U3 Software Central must pass) does not allow ANYTHING to be installed on the host computer. So... what was your point again?

  2. "dd" vs. the button by slide-rule · · Score: 2, Insightful
    It seems people do not want to do things that can be understood easily. They want to do things that look easy, i.e. click some button or run a programm that does a single, highly speciaalised operation and takes no parameters.

    Easy with the generalizations. For what it's worth, "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/dsX" takes up some amount of mental storage, be it rote memory or full-out understanding. That little piece of knowledge itself is a fairly highly specialized operation. OTOH, a well designed UI with a button that says "click me, and I'll fix your problem" saves the average joe from the necessary year (or so) of learning required to have the contextual foundation to appreciate what "dd" even is, let alone how to use it.


    Beyond that, Apple has done one better with their Automator tool... click-n-drag together UI representations of common user operations into a sequence chain -- kind of like piping UNIX command output together, except the UI lets the person actually specify parameters. (And they can be saved for future use every bit as much as creatng a shell script.)