Making USB Flash Drives Smart
 

Have you ever thought what it would be like to sit down in front of any computer, boot it up and have your favorite applications and files immediately at your fingertips? The reality of this dream up to this point has been mostly unrealized – you can perhaps piecemeal using someone else’s Microsoft Office and your Excel and Word files, for example, but that flies in the face of true on-the-go personalization.

Enter U3. A company formed by USB flash drive makers M-Systems and SanDisk. The two companies, independent minded U3 and a vast consortium of other USB flash drive companies and software developers are betting that consumers will be interested in turning a standard flash drive into a “personal workspace”. They gathered recently in San Jose, California for a first ever developer’s summit to discuss their ideas and learn from U3 the ins and outs of developing for this new hardware platform.

http://news.designtechnica.com/featured_article24.html

This is an important development.

If these were to get very large and with decent performance (perhaps with some new hardware adoptions) we would be talking about a whole new era of mobile computing.

A thought comes to mind where users, or cyber cafes, or LAN parties can have such hub stations where people will simply walk in, plug their drive, secure it (somehow) and then pick a screen to sit in front of.

Copy right issues could become much simpler.