Pen Drives Not Robust, but Useful
For many months now, I've been touting the USB pen drive (or flash drive) as an ideal storage device for patrons using the library computers. Because of the way our security arrangements are in place, you can't use the C: drive very effectively. You can't, for example, see the C from the explorer. But you can see the floppy and an external USB device. All you have to do to see the latter is press the Logo Key and the letter E, and then double click on the E: drive (which, if it is a pen drive, will be recognized automatically by the system.
Thus, you have access to some number of storage megabytes between 32 and 2 GBytes, and can easily work on it on any computer at Fairfield or Oxford. Main has some limited number of machines that have USB support, but when these are replaced, it will be universally available.
Now the down side. I bought one of these pen drives a few months ago, and I've had to take it apart three times to solder the internal connections. The case is not solid enough to hold the connection if the solder fails, and since there's a lot of stress on the USB connector from plugging and unplugging it, it fails long before it should. (All devices are rated on a Mean Time Between Failure, or MTBF. It's an interesting question to ask a salesperson.)
We also had failures on two of three of these devices that we bought for library use by our systems department. These were from a different manufacturer. Now, it could have been bad luck, but it's more likely that it was caused by some unforeseen stress, such as a static charge, or a power surge. So, while these little things are super convenient and amazingly compact, there seems to be an ongoing risk that they will succumb to wear and tear, or electrical faults. Prices are dropping, however, and with reasonable care, the total cost of ownership (what the MBA's like to call TCO) will drop as well. They may reach the status of commodities very soon. I saw that one manufacturer was giving a $40 rebate on a $49.00 pen drive.
While we're waiting for the 50 cent pen drive, be sure to back up the contents frequently onto your computer's hard drive or CD burner. You can't be too careful.
Thu Nov-20-2003