For carrying your data with you, there are several solutions, ranging from
plain CD-Rs to Zip disks. With CD-R, one faces the problem of needing CD drives,
and if data needs to be copied, a CD writer is required. Zip disks require
special hardware to run on.
Lately a new kind of media has emerged and is fast becoming popular for
carrying small amounts of data: flash media. Flash cards have no moving parts,
are small and do not lose their content when power is switched off.
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Travel Flash is a small, lightweight USB 1.1 compliant device that has 16 MB
built-in flash memory, and can accommodate other flash cards for additional
memory. Four kinds of media are supported: Compact Flash, Smart Media, Multi
Media and Secure Digital cards.
Cards can be taken in and out while the device is powered on and Windows
automatically detects them as removable drives.
Installation is simple and involves installing the driver software that is
present on a small 8 cm CD, and plugging in the device on a USB port. Data
transfer speed depends on the media that you are using, but is usually in the
range of 150-350KB/s. Drivers are included for Windows 9x, 2000, ME and Mac OS
8.6 and above.