Business & Education

USB drives are relatively new and can be used for so many things. If you have a laptop, and you want to get onto the Internet, you install an Internet air card into it, and you have Internet access almost immediately.

Memory sticks and memory cards hold a vast amount of information. You can literally store several movies on them. And the memory card holders that your card slips into can use one or many different types of memory cards. The next time you shop for one of these, you would be wise to purchase one that accommodates different memory card types. Most likely, you will purchase a different one at one time or another.

You can store thousands of pictures on the cards, or the stick. It will almost seem like your storage on one of these is unlimited. But be careful not to misplace them, they are so very small.

If you keep your drives, memory cards, and even batteries in one holder, you should be able to retrieve any of them without loss. Sometimes they can be held in a small plastic container, giving it a little more weight, but not much. You just need to be careful not to lose them. It is always wise, of course, to back up your data, photos, music, and so on, onto another card or CD, which does not leave your home.

In the 1980s, storage was kept on disks that were actually floppy, and that is why they were called floppy disks. At one time, these floppies were ten by ten inches large, and they were pretty inconvenient. Then they came out with five and a quarter inch diskettes, and then the three inch hard disks that held about a megabyte and a half. It seems so long ago now.

We have grown to need much more storage of information in our lives. And luckily the storage units that are placed in our USB drives are smaller and smaller. Perhaps in the future, they will only be a chip that we carry under a fingernail, but it had better be secure so that we do not lose it.