As these devices become more ubiquitous, push the density envelope, and their prices continue to drop, they become a more flexible resource for personal and business computing.

In that vein, contributing editor Serdar Yegulalp has developed a series of ways in which you can get the most mileage from these remarkably useful devices. In a nutshell:

• Using applications without installing anything on the host machine
• Running a standalone OS from a USB drive
• Maintaining a standalone (and secure) password repository
• Synchronizing data between two or more computers

See the full set of recommendations in Serdar's how-to piece. At the same time, we hope you can share your ideas and best practices with USB drives by commenting on the article in our newly revamped comments field.

Tom Smith
tsmith@cmp.com
www.informationweek.com

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