Yes, that _is_ a 32-gigabyte flash drive in my pocket.
And I am glad to see you.
My favorite gadget right now is the one that, except my phone, gets more use than anything else I own:
The Kingston DataTraveler 102 went on sale a couple months ago, for a day, for $39.99. As the guy with the miniature giraffe says, I jumped in it. (It’s $59.99 on newegg as I write this.)
You may have gathered that I have more than one computer. My desk at work has a desktop and laptop. At home – well, you don’t want to know.
I move files around a lot. At home, I rip a season of a TV show on the desktop machine, then I need to move it to the tablet PC on the treadmill [2]. I start a database project at work and want to take it home with me, I can. I use mapping software at work and at home to do burglary maps that we use in print and on Facebook. (You are friends with us on Facebook [3], right?)
Storage always gets bigger and smaller at the same time, and cheaper, too. It’s not exactly Moore’s Law [4], but it’s probably a corollary. Last year at this time, I had one flash drive for all the files I use in the course I teach at the University of Illinois, and another for work (and several others for various miscellaneous stuff).
Now I just use this one. Kingston has a great reputation and my experience with its products – RAM, flash drives and SD cards – has been universally good. It’s tiny – just over 2 inches long, 3/4-inch wide, less than a 1/2-inch tall. A healthy part of that measurement is a plastic case that surrounds the actual drive and seems to do a very good job protecting it from, like, my keys.
Now, if they can get that 64-gig thumb drive down to $59.99, I’ll jump in it.
Favorite things number 5. [2]
Favorite things number 4 [5].
Favorite things number 3 [6].
Favorite things number 2 [7].
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