Rant #1,689: Something So Simple

Today, after a lot of talk during the past few days about such subjects as Ali, Prince the Monkees, and the Monkees again and again, and again, I am going to veer my Rant over to something very, very simple.

Thumb drives.

Known under a variety of names, including USB Flash Drives and sticks, these little high tech marvels are at the very basics an external storage device for various files that you use on your computer.

These drives are often used like floppy disks used to be used, to keep your data storage in line. Using these little devices, you don't have to keep everything on your computer; when you need these files, just pop one into your USB port and they are there for you.

Just checking into the history of these drives, they were originally invented by an Israeli company as far back as 1999, when we were still using floppy disks. But they were the very basic concept of what these drives became, as they included a wire between a memory unit and the USB connector.

What we now know as a USB Flash Drive evidently was a joint venture between the Israeli company and IBM, although a few Chinese and Taiwanese companies claim that they were the actual inventors, so it is really hard to say who you can credit with the flash drive as we know it, one without a wire.

What we do know is that these little wonders were first released commercially in 2000 by a company called Trek Technology under the name ThumbDrive. IBM marketed the first such drives in the United States around the same time, using some name that no one remembers.

I remember first seeing these things included in media kits around this time, filled with information about whatever product it was included with, such as PDFs with specifications, jpegs of the product, etc.

They were pretty nifty, offering 8 MB of storage, much, much more than an average floppy disk can handle.

Of course moving forward to 2016, these thumb drives can handle even more storage capacity, up to 512 gigabytes on the large size, but 8 MB is still pretty much the standard, and that is what I use when I use them.

And they come in all shapes and sizes. My son has one that is a comic book character, and I have seen others in all different types of outside configurations, but inside, they all do the same thing: act as portable storage devices for whatever files you put on them.

I have a handful of these things at my disposal. A couple I bought myself, and a few were "borrowed" from these press kits once their use had pretty much evaporated, and we didn't need them anymore.

Right now, I use them mainly to hold music files, MP3s, and I use them to play in my car. Newer cars have ports for these things, and it is really handy, handier than burning a CD to play in your car.

Currently, I am listening to a thumb drive full of Monkees music, all their albums plus all of their singles.

I not only have music on this thumb drive, I have photos, too, which I can't see in my car, but just for storage.

But thumb drives are not perfect, and sometimes, they do freeze up (my term) and they cannot be used anymore. I have, on occasion, had such drives just give up on me.

But, for the most part, as long as you keep the drives fresh--I don't expect to keep this music on the drive that long, only long enough to hear it once and then discard it--they pretty much remain usable.

I have another external device, a huge hard drive, and whatever is on the thumb drive has already been transferred to the external hard drive, so I am OK with dumping this stuff off the flash drive once I am done with it.

Anyway, I just wanted to bring these little things up as wonders of modern technology. They are just so flexible in what they can do, and on top of that, they are fun to use.

I am no computer geek; what I know about computers you can fit in a small thimble.

But I know that I do like flash drives, and will continue to use them with regularity, especially for storing music and then using them in my car to while away the time I spend in the car each week.

And I always keep a few in my pocket at work, to use as I see fit for whatever file I need to put on them for work purposes.

So call me a thumb drive devotee, because that is what I am.