I love USB Flash drives! These amazing, portable little devices have made my life more organized, and productive. I have found many uses for them, and I would like to pass on my top 5 favorites.
#1. Like many Home Office workers, I use a desktop computer for my main home office computer, but as I am also a mom, I use a laptop so I can keep up with my work, while on the run. The problem is, keeping the most recent version of documents, websites, account files, etc., on the computer I am working on. So I use flash drives or thumb drives to save my files. I keep a separate drive for each
project or client, and I keep them on a key ring. At the end of the day (or sometimes the end of the week) I transfer all the files into their appropriate folders on my desktop computer so they are available for my regularly scheduled backup. This keeps all my files current, and with me, no matter where I am working and I am never without that one file that I need.
#2. My family lives all over the globe. We communicate via email, phone, social network, photos and videos. The problem comes when I have digital videos of kid’s events, special occasions, or milestones that are too large to upload, or email. No problem! I can pop it on a flash drive and put it in the mail. We often have several flash drives circulating, as people add their own pictures, videos, etc., and download everyone else’s, then mail it on. For this purpose, I prefer the 1-2 gig flash drives.
#3. You can even run applications on it, although it’s read and write speeds may be a problem, depending on the application. This is a great way to maintain confidentiality with proprietary information. There are some requirements and constraints when installing applications to flash drives, but the technology exists. Check out the portable versions of applications like Open Office, Firefox, and Foxit Reader! You will need a larger sized flash drive to load not only your application, but your files as well.
#4. I have an mp3 player and have quite an extensive library of music. I had it all stored on my computer, and backed it up to CDs, but I like the portability of the flash drive for my music! True, you have to have a high capacity flash drive to hold A LOT of music, but imagine being able to trade music with friends as easily as pulling your keychain out of your pocket?
#5. Kids homework. How many times have I had to stop what I was doing, run to my daughter’s computer, locate a file she had done for homework and email it to her at school? Now, my kids do their home work and save it to their own flash drives that they keep with their school books. The dogs never get a chance to eat their homework!
These amazing little gems have saved me countless hours, made me more organized, and have been great fun. Another use I have recently seen, is that flash drives can be imprinted with your company logo! True they are a little pricey as a give away, but you can burn your sales presentation or marketing materials on it,
put your logo on it, and the client will still be able to use it, probably on a daily basis! Now that is a useful piece of marketing!
I will bet that you can come up with even more great uses for these little pocket sized treasures, it seems that smaller, really is better!