Computer in a key chain. (new products).M-Systems, www.diskonkey.com, Hardware, $49.99-$199.99 (8MB-256MB available) What's smaller than a pen, fits on a key chain, and allows you to move documents and other files seamlessly between home and work, as well as between a Mac and a PC? It's DiskOnKey, a portable flash storage device with a CPU CPU in full central processing unit Principal component of a digital computer, composed of a control unit, an instruction-decoding unit, and an arithmetic-logic unit. that can run on any operating system operating system (OS) Software that controls the operation of a computer, directs the input and output of data, keeps track of files, and controls the processing of computer programs. without requiring the download To receive a file transmitted over a network. In any communications session, "download" means receive, and "upload" means send. The download/upload often implies a big/little scenario, in which data is being downloaded from the "big" server into the "little" user's computer. of drivers. And it's turning up in a growing number of school environments. Blaine Phelps, worldwide marketing manager at M-Systems, says that schools find the device particularly useful because it's cross-platform. While colleges were first to embrace the technology, he says that the device is now being tested at the K-12 level. Potential applications include uploading eBooks for students to read at home or school, mining in homework assignments (which can be automatically graded) on the device and allowing administrators and teachers to bring home student records or master files without a jazz or zip drive See Zip disk. (hardware, storage) Zip Drive - A disk drive from Iomega Corporation which takes removable 100 megabyte hard disks. Both internal and external drives are manufactured, making the drive suitable for backup, mass storage or for moving files between computers. . The CPU, which is as powerful as those in handheld computers A computing device that can be easily held in one hand while the other hand is used to operate it. The Palm devices are a popular example. See Palm, smartphone and palmtop. , allows applications such as Microsoft Outlook For the e-mail and news client bundled with certain versions of Microsoft Windows, see . Microsoft Outlook or Outlook (full name Microsoft Office Outlook to be run directly from DiskOnKey. One university uses DiskOnKey devices to store each student's personal data. When a student plugs it into a computer, the machine is automatically logged on. This allows the school to know who's been on which computers and for how long, as well as what Web sites have been viewed. Recently added DiskOnKey features include an automatic boot function and recognition by most Basic Input Output Systems that start and configure See configuration. (software) configure - A program by Richard Stallman to discover properties of the current platform and to set up make to compile and install gcc. Cygnus configure was a similar system developed by K. personal computers. For IT staff, these functions mean there's no longer a need to carry an army of disks with drivers and system tools--they could all fit on one DiskOnKey. Educators and administrators can use the device to run diagnostic checks after a computer crash. The KeySafe security software application is another new feature. KeySafe enables users to easily save secure and non-secure data on a DiskOnKey. The data is then accessible only through a password. Users can divide the memory space for either secure data or free space. CIRCLE #500 FOR INFORMATION [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] |
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