U3 Makes Programs Portable

By turning a USB flash drive into a USB smart drive, U3 lets you carry programs and personal preferences, launch software, and access all of your own data on any Windows XP or Windows 2000 PC from a device the size of a pack of gum.

Next time you look for a USB portable device make certain that it contains as much memory as you can afford and has the U3 logo on it. The U3 logo means that the device is compatible with the U3 smart drive computing platform. This compatibility means that you can move one or more of the compatible programs onto the USB drive and never again have to worry about finding a compatible program on another computer, not having your personal settings for that program on the foreign computer, or not having access to your data. It's all on the U3-compatible USB smart drive. Just plug it into the foreign computer and run the program directly from the USB drive and have all of your personal settings and data immediately available.

Best of all, it's secure. A U3-powered USB smart drive hosts a "personal workspace" -- not only a person's data and files, but software programs, personal preferences and the means for managing them -- all in a highly secure environment. The U3 platform is designed to leave the host computer unaltered when the U3 powered USB smart drive is removed, and the user has full confidence that no personal information has been left behind.

U3 software development tools should be available by September 2005. [It's available as of Jan 2006 and hardware sales have begun.]

More Information

• U3 LLC Company Site

Added July 2006:

OK, I've now actually tried a U3 device and my conclusion is that this technology is not quite ready for prime time as yet. Of my two computers, the device only worked on one and the device maker could not tell me why it would not work on the other. Finding computers that the device would not work on kind of defeats the purpose of the device which is to make work portable.

Another thing to note is that the U3 device appears to the computer to be a DVD drive instead of a standard disk drive which most USB devices appear to be to Windows. It's speculated that the problems I was having were caused by interference with other software that handles DVD data streams. Just another thing to think about.

In the meantime, don't commit mission critical programs and data to a U3 device and expect that they will work anywhere on any computer. The promise is not yet fulfilled.