USB Memorysticks have been around for a long time now and most people have at least one. What do people use them for? Well for one thing they have replaced the old “floppy Disk” drive. Just about every PC you can buy these days doesn’t even have one installed. A USB Memorystick is generally used for transporting stuff just like the floppies were used for. Do you know that they can be used for a heap of other things as well? There are some that anyone can use them for and some where you need to be a bit more au fait with Windows.
You now can get a USB memorystick up to 32 gigabytes these days and they keep getting bigger so why not use one for backing up your most important data. There are several programs (free ones as well) that can be used to automatically backup your critical information. One free on I use and think it is excellent is “Karen’s Replicator”.
Windows comes with it’s own media player so you can listen to music on your PC and also copy music files with it. It can be used to build a library on your USB memorystick that you can then plug into any PC running windows and listen to your favorite music. You have then effectively a MP3 player. Listen on your PC speakers or plug in headphones.
Like to speed up your PC. Using a USB memorystick if you are running Windows Vista, you can speed up your system using ReadyBoost . You can use the space on a memory stick as additional memory cache to aid the cache on your hard disk. Flash memory is faster than a hard disk, with its physical moving parts. The memory cache provided by ReadyBoost can greatly improve system responsiveness. Using ReadyBoost is easy. You just insert your USB memorystick into your Vista system and follow the on screen prompts to configure and use it.
Want to make your PC more secure? You can use a USB memorystick as a “key” What it can do is lock up your PC whenever you remove the memorystick from the USB port. No-one can then use or access your data until you plug the memory stick back in. There is a little utility called “Predator” that you can download for free it will key your USB memorystick to your PC.
You can run what are called “Portable Applications” from a USB memorystick. Just think you can take your most used applications and run them on any PC specially useful if you do not own a laptop. Applications such as “OpenOffice”, Firefox can be made portable. Others can be found at PortableApps. You can virtually install just about everything you need to run things as if you were on your own PC.
If you want the complete thing you can even run a whole windows or linux operating system from a USB memorystick. Not for the faint hearted though and can be a bit ticklish to do. There are some guides around to assist in this endeavor.
Are you a Web developer? did you know that with Server2Go, you can run a Web server that supports Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Perl from a memory stick. Server2Go runs on all versions of Windows, supports all the common browsers, and is free. The benefits of having a portable Web server on a USB memorystick are numerous. You will find more information on the Server2Go site.