[Scott Vermillion <scott_vermillion@xxxxxxxxx>]

> What is all this hype about U3? Its a USB stick after all and it holds a binary which should be able to be doubleclicked from it. So what's all THAT hot of having a

> menubar gui to launch it from there?

> I could never ever use U3 so far (I use a Mac in 99% of the cases) and usually have a hard time deleting the U3 installation to recover the memory space I'm supposed to > have (as there is no U3 tools for  the Mac, there is no uninstaller for it neither and formatting the stick doesnt get rid of the virtual CD which shows up to annoy you....)

> What am I missing here?

 

Well, I'm not a MAC user, so I can't really address your specific issues w/ U3.  It does several things for me in the Windows world.  I can port around certain apps, which may not be something everyone needs everyday, but I do often enough.  Many of the machines I work on have no "office" apps installed whatsoever.  So when I need to download and open a PDF or open a Word doc as part of some troubleshooting or upgrade effort, I'm stuck.  Again, for a lot of folks, no big deal.  But most of my work is international and I can't just pop off to my office when such a need arises -- it's back to the hotel, sometimes an hour or two drive away.

 

I also have troubles with administrator privileges.  If I could run Wireshark without the need to install anything, it would be great. 

 

I also like being able to port my desktop around.  I don't keep a lot there, but I sometimes download something directly to the desktop and then forget to move it to the proper subdirectory on my USB drive.

 

Most of all, probably, I love the synchronization feature of U3.  I keep everything (excepting the occasional errant desktop object, obviously) under a certain root subdirectorty.  That's what's synched to my USB drive.  Thus, my most critical files always exist both on my hard drive and my U3 stick - with me wherever I go with a minimum of effort to keep it that way.  It only takes a few mouse clicks to synch everything up, so no excuses for not doing so at least daily. 

 

Another improvement over my last USB drive is the password feature.  I'm sure this has been overcome even on non-U3 drives by now, but at one time you used to have to have software installed in the host machine before you could password protect your USB stick.  My U3 drive was the first that I owned where you could just plug it in on any machine and have a password promt pop up.  That was actually the initial feature that caught my eye.

 

In short, it's a lot like an extension of my personal machine hanging around my neck wherever I may go.  And with capacity doubling on a  regular basis, it's becoming all the more so.

 

Scott