Flash me....Please!

I have a few who still ask me what a flash drive is, and I don't see that as some admission of computer ignorance. Not at all.

A flash drive is a device that plugs into your computer quite easily and acts like a very small hard drive. Well, NOT so small, actually. You can get them now as large as several gigabytes. Oh, yeah...Gigabyte...that's a measure of size on a storage device.

What's a flash drive useful for? Well, you COULD use it as sort of a backup device to keep a copy of important data....documents, pictures, music...and the like.

They're quite handy, really, and they fit in your pocket or on a key chain...we're talking small and portable. You can buy a 2 gigabyte Flash Drive for about the cost of what a box or two of floppy disks used to cost...you remember those? And you can put about 2,000 floppy disks worth of information on a two gigabyte drive. Are you keeping up?

So what are they, again? : A really small, really inexpensive, really portable storage device that is worth looking into.

Call or write me and ask questions about flash drives, if you like. I'll get back to you in a flash!

Yeah, its new today, but will it be 'history' tomorrow?

A lot of folks have gone out and spent good money on a laptop or desktop computer for their kid(s) to use at school; I hope they let their kids pick them out.

Well meaning parents, wanting desperately to keep the college costs under control skimp and buy under powered PC's/laptops only to later discover they've been penny wise and pound foolish. Take notes here, save a dime or two and avoid the 'instant obsolescence' trap:

1st: There is NO SUCH THING as TOO much RAM memory. RAM is a bad place to skimp; if you don't know what I'm talking about, just trust me and buy a machine with 2 GB of RAM.

2nd: Does the machine include the software the user needs for school? Probably better have them add Microsoft Office Basic, which includes most of what any student will need.

3rd: Ask for an Intel 'dual core 2' processor or better. Again, trust me...the Celeron processors suck; they just do. The ADM chips MAY be fine, but Intel is ALWAYS a safe bet.

4th: Yes, every college kid needs a WI-FI wireless card. No ifs, ands, or buts. Hi-School kids need 'em, too.

There's lots more to tell, but if you follow these 4 rules the rest will fall into place. If you disregard these rules you've just bought a machine that is yesterday's technology today.