USB Flash Drives
The PC accessory that has become geek sheik
USB Flash Drives are the latest way to make your PCs storage as portable as possible. Forget Zip Discs floppies and CDs? A USB flash drive can store more data than floppy and is more readily available than a CD/RW. Any computer with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) port can facilitate one. USB is the latest high speed way for computers to communicate with peripheral devices.
A USB Flash Drive is a chip of computer memory housed inside a protective and usually decorative cover with a USB connector on one end. It'll usually look like a stick you can plug into any device with a USB port, usually a PC.
They'll store up to two Gigs, but you can expect newer ones to be made to push well beyond that storage limit. It's the method of choice for transporting files from one computer to another.
CD-RWs are CDs you can write data on and then erase as needed.CD's are often used to transport files like a floppy disc, but a USB Flash Drive is much faster and easier to use than CD-RW. It takes time to burn a CD and many computers don't have a CD writer. But nearly every PC today has a USB port that will allow you to read and write to a USB Flash Drive quickly and easily. A CD-RW only has 1000 erase/write cycles, so it can only be erased 1000 times before you throw it away. The USB Flash Drive, on the other hand, is good for 500,000 erase/write cycles. USB Flash Drives are much faster and hold many times more data than any floppy disc.
USB Flash Culture
Since coming into common use with consumers, the USB Flash Drive has been absorbed into the mainstream culture. Some of the techie nicknames for USB Flash Drive include Chip Stick, Data Key, and Data Stick. Some folks even call it a Magic Stick in reference to a 50 Cent lyric. In Seattle, they'll call it a Keyfob and in Pennsylvania it's a Jon. The Spanish call it a Gli-Gli, Piripicho, Chubidubi or even Chingadera. Geek Stick is a popular term used for a USB Flash Drive if it has diagnostic utilities pre-loaded onto it.
Manufacturers try to give their brand of USB Flash Drive cute or cool names. Cruzer are USB Flash Drive's made by SanDisk. Travel Drive is the Memorex trademark. Sony's USB storage devices are called Vault Drive and Lexar calls its portable USB storage Jump Drive. Some people might mistakenly call it a Memory Stick, but Memory Stick refers to a Sony branded flash memory that doesn't have a USB port and is used mostly for portable Sony devices.
The shapes of the devices are even more varied than the names people have for them. They get used as keychains and often even MP3 players. It might be more accurate to say that solid state single chip MP3 players are really no more than USB Flash Drives with a headphone jack built in. They can be used to store any data type, not just MP3s. Today, many USB Flash Drives are multipurpose devices. Swiss Army Knifes with a USB Flash Drive is one example. There are even USB Flash Drive Pen and MP3 player combinations that are no bigger than most pens and will fit in your pocket. Welcome to the new world of cheap computer chips.