dbarrow
08-26-2006, 11:25 AM
http://u3.com/default.aspx
Imagine carrying your favorite software, preferences, profiles and data on a device no bigger than a pack of gum. With a U3 smart drive, you can plug into any Windows 2000 or XP PC and work , play a game, message friends, send email, edit photos and more, all without worrying if applications are installed on the computer. ...
*Well, this is the come on...
Do you ever run up against those situations where you wish you had YOUR Firefox browser and all YOUR bookmarks handy?
Do you ever have to work on a machine that is not your own or is locked down as a very restricted user?
If so... consider getting one of these!
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=81816-9
Kingston 1GB U3 DataTraveler Smart USB 2.0 Flash Drive Retail ***Free Shipping***
Our Price: $27.00
Close to the going rate for a 1g flash drive these days but with a little extra.
As our machines at work are locked down to very restricted users, and you can't bookmark things on them, not to mention having to use IE (which I can't stand anymore),
I just had to order one of these to give it a try.
YES! It will give you Firefox WITH all your bookmarks.
Simply go to the U3 downloads and install Firefox. It will update itself in the usual fashion.
Importing bookmarks was a little quirky ... a Mozilla thing.
It took me a couple minutes to figure out that I had to point the import at Documents and Settings\(My user)\application data\Mozilla\bookmarks.htm
After that, I imported all my FF bookmarks.
Bear in mind that it will be a little SLOW as it will be running off the flash drive and not the machine OS!
Not annoyingly slow, but noticable.
Want Winamp?
Yes, there is a free download for that as well.
Storage for a ton of your files?
Ample room leftover to carry a bunch of stuff on the drive.
THE HOOK!
The initial impression you get from the website is that you can carry your computer in your pocket with this.
It kind of leads you into thinking that you can put your desktop, preferences, and apps on it.
Not exactly the case!
The U3 launcher does give you a panel where you can launch apps that are on the drive, as well as vsit their site, download U3 apps, etc.
There is a load of U3 software apps on the download site.
The RUB is, most of them are PAID versions and the prices are not all that low considering what they are.
Firefox and Winamp are among the free ones.
Other than those two, I have found nothing else I wanted.
You can only install U3 apps (that come as a .U3 package) onto the drive. It's not like you can load MS Office on it, or anything else for that matter, and have it appear in the launch pad.
You can, of course, store an .exe file in the remaining storage space and get to it via the explore U3 portion of the launch pad.
This can be handy on a machine that is restricted and you can't get to Explorer to view the drive contents.
Further experimentation necessary here as I have not tried this out on the work machines yet.
Before you buy one of these, go to the U3 site and browse the downloads section to see what U3 apps you may be interested in.
As this is more or less an open source project, expect to see many more apps being added in U3 format soon.
The product has the potential to evolve into a very useful utility. What can be done with it and what can be written to run on it are wide open.
There is a developer section which probably explains how to construct your own U3 apps or modify programs to get them to run as a U3 app. I have not dug deep enough to research that yet.
U3 may be handy for the "computer fixer" if you can load it with utilities and have them easily launch from the U3 launcher, especially on a machine where you have difficulties.
Imagine carrying your favorite software, preferences, profiles and data on a device no bigger than a pack of gum. With a U3 smart drive, you can plug into any Windows 2000 or XP PC and work , play a game, message friends, send email, edit photos and more, all without worrying if applications are installed on the computer. ...
*Well, this is the come on...
Do you ever run up against those situations where you wish you had YOUR Firefox browser and all YOUR bookmarks handy?
Do you ever have to work on a machine that is not your own or is locked down as a very restricted user?
If so... consider getting one of these!
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=81816-9
Kingston 1GB U3 DataTraveler Smart USB 2.0 Flash Drive Retail ***Free Shipping***
Our Price: $27.00
Close to the going rate for a 1g flash drive these days but with a little extra.
As our machines at work are locked down to very restricted users, and you can't bookmark things on them, not to mention having to use IE (which I can't stand anymore),
I just had to order one of these to give it a try.
YES! It will give you Firefox WITH all your bookmarks.
Simply go to the U3 downloads and install Firefox. It will update itself in the usual fashion.
Importing bookmarks was a little quirky ... a Mozilla thing.
It took me a couple minutes to figure out that I had to point the import at Documents and Settings\(My user)\application data\Mozilla\bookmarks.htm
After that, I imported all my FF bookmarks.
Bear in mind that it will be a little SLOW as it will be running off the flash drive and not the machine OS!
Not annoyingly slow, but noticable.
Want Winamp?
Yes, there is a free download for that as well.
Storage for a ton of your files?
Ample room leftover to carry a bunch of stuff on the drive.
THE HOOK!
The initial impression you get from the website is that you can carry your computer in your pocket with this.
It kind of leads you into thinking that you can put your desktop, preferences, and apps on it.
Not exactly the case!
The U3 launcher does give you a panel where you can launch apps that are on the drive, as well as vsit their site, download U3 apps, etc.
There is a load of U3 software apps on the download site.
The RUB is, most of them are PAID versions and the prices are not all that low considering what they are.
Firefox and Winamp are among the free ones.
Other than those two, I have found nothing else I wanted.
You can only install U3 apps (that come as a .U3 package) onto the drive. It's not like you can load MS Office on it, or anything else for that matter, and have it appear in the launch pad.
You can, of course, store an .exe file in the remaining storage space and get to it via the explore U3 portion of the launch pad.
This can be handy on a machine that is restricted and you can't get to Explorer to view the drive contents.
Further experimentation necessary here as I have not tried this out on the work machines yet.
Before you buy one of these, go to the U3 site and browse the downloads section to see what U3 apps you may be interested in.
As this is more or less an open source project, expect to see many more apps being added in U3 format soon.
The product has the potential to evolve into a very useful utility. What can be done with it and what can be written to run on it are wide open.
There is a developer section which probably explains how to construct your own U3 apps or modify programs to get them to run as a U3 app. I have not dug deep enough to research that yet.
U3 may be handy for the "computer fixer" if you can load it with utilities and have them easily launch from the U3 launcher, especially on a machine where you have difficulties.