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Tuesday November 29, 2005
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 To be honest, I am not in love with the design of the Memorex U3 smart Mini TravelDrive. (256MB, $39.99 direct) I could do without the little circular bulge in the middle of the device. Still, the device has a a killer combination of software and it works like a dream.
The smart Mini TravelDrive is on of a new breed of "smart" USB keys built using the U3 platform. U3 drives can be loaded with a assortment of software that runs directly from the key and doesn't alter any of your system settings. That means you can plug in the key, run a U3 version of Firefox with all of your personal bookmarks, and after you pull out the drive there will be no trace of any of your Web surfing. Memorex ships its drive with synchronization, antivirus, and email client software, making it a cut above the competition. My only compaint is that the company didn't send a larger capacity device for me to test they run as large as large as 2GB. You can find out about U3 and the other drives in my roundup here.
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January 5, 2006 1:08 PM
Bought a 1 GB version of the drive, and it was a total disaster. After plugging it in, the system essentially froze. The manual mentioned that few minutes might be required for the initial installation of ther drive; it also said that a reboot is required (!) after the initial installation. How is that supposed to work if for example you are using a public computer??? To make matters worse, my computer froze again after I plugged in the drive after re-boot, and would not work until I unplugged the drive. I exchanged the drive for a new one, and tried using it on another system - same thing. To add insult to injury, my old USB key does not work any more when I plug it to the same USB port! Both machines were running Windows XP Pro, both systems were clean. This is by far the worst product I have ever tried - buyers beware!
January 26, 2006 10:35 AM
I bought a 1 GB Verbatim U3 Smart! This is not a smart idea for there are many bugs they (Verbatim) still have to work out. I e-mailed customer service. I was having a lot of trouble. They sent me an e-mail back saying they needed more information. I sent them everything they needed they never responded. I think you should save your money and the pain of having your PC in a reboot loop. Hope you take my advice and never purchase one of these things!