Company Introduces Full-Function Computer on a Flash Drive

KYW News Radio [PA] ^ | Saturday, December 17, 2005 | Bob Bicknell

[brityank]

Company Introduces Full-Function Computer on a Flash Drive

by KYW's tech reporter Bob Bicknell

By now you’ve seen those thumb-sized "flash drives" you can just stick into your computer’s USB port and use like a portable hard drive.

But now, that same little device can do a whole lot more.

No longer are flash-memory hard drives reserved for just documents or MP3 files. Now, thanks to the folks at Fingergear, you can carry a mini computer with you.

The aptly named "Computer on a Stick" is a small, lighter-sized USB drive that carries its own operating system (Linux), a complete Microsoft Office-compatible suite of office software, a web browser, a calculator, an AOL-compatible chat program, and an e-mail program -- basically, everything in your current computer, only a lot smaller.

It works beautifully. Simply tell your computer to boot to the USB drive. You can do this even if your hard drive is fried, since you'll be working in the BIOS, which loads before any hard drive-based information.

Your machine will boot to the Computer On A Stick, and you'll soon be doing everything you want to do without using your hard drive at all.

Computer On A Stick costs $99 for the 256MB model, $139 for the half-gigabyte model, and $179 for the full gigabyte (that'd be our choice).

It’s a wonderful and useful gadget!

Read Bob Bicknell's "Web Pick of the Day"

[JoJo Gunn]

ping

[martin_fierro]

Thanks!

Roxio 6 won't burn the ISO file to my USB drive, tho -- can you recommend any other programs that would?

[tallhappy]

Exactly. If it can boot from USB, it'll work.

Then sell it for 100 dollars.

[Senator Bedfellow]

Why can't you just copy it to the USB device? All you're really doing is making a bootable device that then mounts that .iso directly.

[Tarpon]

Make your own for less. You can get a 512mb usb flash drive for under $20, add DSL and you are good to go. Or you can just load up the applications you want and run them from the usb stick from windows. Portable Firefox is available here.

[martin_fierro]

Why can't you just copy it to the USB device?

Wasn't sure whether the ISO copying process did some special Linux-specific system formatting. I'll give that a try.

[Senator Bedfellow]

It shouldn't need anything special - the real action is in modifying the boot process to mount the .iso image as a cd-rom.

[martin_fierro]

Welp, tried it with both Knoppix & Ubuntu, but was told that either was too big to fit onto a 512M USB drive.

Is there a way to just copy over certain directories & still have it run?

[Senator Bedfellow]

On that last link I gave, the link from there is busted, but if you go here:

http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Knoppix_Customizations

there's a list of stripped-down (and otherwise customized) versions of Knop that you can use to fit into your limited space.

[SunkenCiv]

:'D

[boris]

Since I had many disastrous experiences with flashdrives (losing data) I won't use them. The brand was SanDisk. I suspect that the probability of data loss is higher on dry days, when static electricity is higher.

[brityank]

Three pointers I was given for USB MemStiks:

> Keep the cover on;
> Touch the metal sleeve to the case or ground before inserting;
> ALWAYS right-click and detach drive on Taskbar before removing.

If you just pull it out, you may not close the files, and it will corrupt the contents. Never lost anything yet.