Kit
Eaton over at Fast Company claimed that USB memory sticks were “facing
extinction”. These are the same memory sticks that people today — in 2015 —
still carry around and use every single day.
In fact, the coffin in the nail of Kit’s claim is this: a
2015 report by Global Industry
Analysts found that the global market for these little memory sticks is due
to exceed over half a billion units by 2020.
The reasons provided in the report for the surging growth of this market
(despite the availability of so many
alternative cloud solutions) were:
· Rapid penetration of the USB 3.0 standard with high data transfer
rates (1.25 Gbps to 5 Gbps).
· Proliferation of mobile devices with microUSB ports are “lending
traction to the USB flash drives market”.
· An increase in the capacity of these drives, which are up to 256
GB right now.
It isn’t even debatable really. People like that you can plug in a USB drive
and quickly transferr files rather than waiting to slowly upload files to
cloud services — services which are constantly marred with news reports of
data losses, privacy issues, and hacker penetrations.
The Many Uses of USB Flash Drives
The popularity of these drives isn’t only due to superior speed and
portability, but also because of the variety of things you can do with them.
1. Use USB Drives as Physical Keys
If you travel a lot, then you probably use your laptop or
tablet in airports, Internet cafes, and other
public places. These are unfortunately the most common places where you’ll
find thieves just waiting for unattended devices to steal. This is when a
USB
drive as physical key comes in handy.
usb-memory2
There are a few ways you can
turn your USB drive into a physical key.
Predator is one of the
most recommended applications out there. It locks your computer whenever you
remove the USB drive. But more than that, Predator takes a picture any time
someone tries to use your computer when you’re away, and it’ll issue a loud
alarm if someone enters an incorrect password.
The downside is that Predator costs up to $30. If that’s an issue, you might
be better off using the next choice that is free.
http://www.predator-usb.com/predator/en/index.php
The free USB Raptor is an
alternative to Predator. .
Raptor may not have all of the bells and whistles of Predator, but it will
lock your laptop pretty solid, even without the ability to enter a password
at all until the drive is plugged back in.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/usbraptor/
2. Physically Secure Your Laptop
An alternative to using a USB drive as a physical key is to use it as an
actual security device. Sounds weird, but once you see how
LAlarm works, you’ll wonder
how you ever got by without it. (And it’s free!)
How to lock down a laptop to a table – LAlarm – Free Laptop Alarm Security
Software
http://www.lalarm.com/laptop-lock-to-a-table/
How it works is ingenious. You fasten a thin metal cable or strap to the
memory stick, secure the other end to a large table or another immobile
device near you, and plug the USB stick into your computer. The moment you
lock the Windows screen, your USB security system is enabled.
It seriously gives new meaning to the phrase “locking down” your
laptop. You can also
customize the alarm sound the software makes if the USB drive gets pulled
out, like an ear-piercing noise that’ll attract a lot of attention. The
would-be thief is likely to put the laptop back down and run!
3. No Need to Remember Passwords
The funniest thing I’ve seen is when visiting a friend’s house, my friend
couldn’t remember his Wi-Fi password, so he went into his den and dug around
in his desk for a while to find a small slip of paper he had used to write
down his wireless credentials.
He could have just saved his wireless credentials to a USB drive, in which
case the USB drive would act like a physical key that can set up
Wi-Fi access.
The easiest way to do this is using the netsh command. Start by opening the
Command Prompt and typing: netsh wlan show profiles
Once you’ve identified the name of the profile you want to use, you can save
it to USB using this command:
netsh wlan export profile “” key=clear
folder=””
Obviously, replace the and with the
appropriate terms.
Next, when you’ve lost your network connection, or someone has arrived at
your home with a new laptop and they need your network connection settings,
just plug your USB into their device and type:
netsh wlan add profile filename=”” user=all
Replace with the path of your USB drive and the XML file
stored there. This will create the wireless profile with all of the correct
settings and password to connect to your wireless network.
4. Carry Portable Apps With You
USB memory sticks aren’t just about storing files. Sometimes they can be
used to carry around a virtual briefcase of software for all of your needs.
If you’re a writer, imagine having your favorite word processor and
dictionary/thesaurus apps right in your front pocket. If you’re a software
engineer, imagine having
programming
software and security apps so you can do your important work anywhere.
There are many solutions for this. In fact, Mark has covered a
complete list of portable
apps that you can load up on your USB stick, but if you don’t want to do all
of that work yourself, you can use the
Portable Apps tool found here:
PortableApps.com Suite and PortableApps.com Platform | PortableApps.com –
Portable software for USB, portable and cloud drives
http://portableapps.com/suite
Here is a link to a review we have written on this tool and others.
How Portable Apps Can Make Your Life Easier & Save Resources
By Tina Sieber
that
we’ve reviewed before here at MakeUseOf.
portable-apps
Portable Apps offers a selection of over 300 apps ranging across categories
like Education, Office, Internet, and Games. Can the cloud do this? Maybe,
but it would be pretty hard to access these important apps during those
times when you don’t have an Internet connection!
5. Boot Linux Live
Another excellent purpose for a USB drive is to live boot a PC or
Mac into any distro of Linux.
What good is carrying around a live Linux distro? Well, just one glance at
Justin’s list of
50 cool
uses for booting live Linux should give you all the reasons you’ll ever
need.
You can find that list here.
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/download-50-cool-uses-for-live-cds/
You can do it to restore data, work on or recover a system, set up a
temporary SSH or VNC server, and so much more.
You can
live boot a Mac into Linux using a USB stick as well.
Can you do that with Dropbox or Google Drive? I’m
sure some clever geek could come up with a way, but it certainly wouldn’t be
easy — and again, useless without an Internet connection.
USB Drives Are Here to Stay
It’s clear that USB drives fulfill many different uses. In addition to the
ones outlined above, USB drives are also perfect for all of the following:
· Store and
encrypt your most sensitive personal files that you don’t want to
leave accessible from the Internet.
· Be an IT superhero by keeping
Windows maintenance tools or
virus scanning tools right on your USB
drive.
· Run a portable
web server off of a USB flash drive sitting in your pocket.
· Run a Chromebook right off your USB drive using
Hexxeh ChromeOS!
· Keep your library of music right in your pocket and
install WinAMP or some other player to play it on the go.
There is a reason so many people continue buying USB flash drives year after
year. They are cheap to purchase, fast and easy to use, and with so many
valuable uses it’s impossible to own just one.
6. Install a portable screenreader on a USB drive such as NVDA, System
Access, JAWS, Window-eyes, or Dolphen.
7. Install a portable screen enlargement software program suchas Zoomtext
or iZoom USB by Issist for accessing the screen as a low vision computer
user.]]>
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