:. Introduction .:

Remember the old days where everyone had big stacks of floppy disks and could only save 1.44MB on them? Not only were they slow, at least six were needed to save anything important or backup small files. Times have changed in a short period of time and information can be stored on small, fast, portable, devices with huge amounts of storage capacity.

The Trek ThumbDrive Smart is a perfect example of where storage technology is heading. The name says it all and comparing it to my hand, this ThumbDrive is actually smaller than my thumb! It is extremely light, built solid, and is very useful.

:. Specifications .:

System Requirements:

• Available USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 port (works at USB 1.1 speed)
• CD-ROM Drive if running Windows 98/SE for driver installation
• Pentium 100 MHz (or equivalent) or higher

For PC Users:

• Windows 98/98SE, 2000, ME, and XP

For Mac Users:

• Mac OS 8.6 or higher

:. What's inside the box .:

• Personal Storage Unit - 16 MB ThumbDrive
• Registration Card
• Driver CD

:. TREK 16MB ThumbDrive Smart .:

One of the most important things anyone should do with important files is back them up. Like many, I have personally experienced the horror of having school assignments lost forever because I did not back them up. After a few of these nerve-racking situations, I learned to constantly backup my important files. The ThumbDrive from Trek is the perfect companion for many because it allows you to backup your data easily and very fast.

I find the ThumbDrive very useful for university assignments and I have completely stopped using floppy diskettes to save my work because it just so much more convenient having the ThumbDrive. In the computer labs, the drive is the perfect device to have to save your work to.

The unit being reviewed is a 16 MB version, but there are also versions up to 256 MB for the Smart line. Although everybody seems to be talking about gigabytes now, you'd be surprised just how much the 16 MB ThumbDrive can store. I managed to store 30 high quality images, 10 average-sized MS Word documents, and a few PDF documents. I would have had to use about 11 floppy diskettes to store that much.

The ThumbDrive is also very fast. It uses USB 1.1, which is significantly slower than the new 2.0 standard, but I found that for this amount of memory it does not make a difference. You can fill up the drive in about 40 seconds - not bad at all!

During the read/write process, a green LED light flashes when writing and lights up solid when reading information.

These devices have been very slow coming to the market place. This baffles me because they save so much time and are so easy to use. They are also inexpensive and have very long read/write cycles.

I am running Windows XP and the device works in perfect harmony with this, and other, operating systems. All I did was plug it in and Windows automatically recognized it. In "My Computer", a new drive icon appears and you can access the drive just like any other. Want to put something on it? simply drag and drop. That's how easy this device thing. Anyone can use it.