Company Introduces Full-Function Computer on a Flash Drive

KYW News Radio [PA] ^ | Saturday, December 17, 2005 | Bob Bicknell

[brityank]

Company Introduces Full-Function Computer on a Flash Drive

by KYW's tech reporter Bob Bicknell

By now you’ve seen those thumb-sized "flash drives" you can just stick into your computer’s USB port and use like a portable hard drive.

But now, that same little device can do a whole lot more.

No longer are flash-memory hard drives reserved for just documents or MP3 files. Now, thanks to the folks at Fingergear, you can carry a mini computer with you.

The aptly named "Computer on a Stick" is a small, lighter-sized USB drive that carries its own operating system (Linux), a complete Microsoft Office-compatible suite of office software, a web browser, a calculator, an AOL-compatible chat program, and an e-mail program -- basically, everything in your current computer, only a lot smaller.

It works beautifully. Simply tell your computer to boot to the USB drive. You can do this even if your hard drive is fried, since you'll be working in the BIOS, which loads before any hard drive-based information.

Your machine will boot to the Computer On A Stick, and you'll soon be doing everything you want to do without using your hard drive at all.

Computer On A Stick costs $99 for the 256MB model, $139 for the half-gigabyte model, and $179 for the full gigabyte (that'd be our choice).

It’s a wonderful and useful gadget!

Read Bob Bicknell's "Web Pick of the Day"

[neb52]

or you could make your own with DSL and save quite bit if you are inclined. but the prices listed isn't to bad. FYI, The key is to set the PC to boot from USB, older(more than 2 years) PCs and laptops are not able to do that.

[SunkenCiv]

:') Quick, before the "Dell was making this five years ago" crowd arrives. ;'D

[SunkenCiv]

(': Ping.

Sidebar: Did you ever repair/replace your VFM7?

[Fierce Allegiance]

Cool! It's in a price range I can deal with, too.

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.fingergear.com/

[Senator Bedfellow]

How is this different from a CD distro? Okay, you could write to whatever space is left, but still, Knoppix isn't a "computer on a disk", is it?

[tallhappy]

How is this different from a CD distro? Okay, you could write to whatever space is left, but still, Knoppix isn't a "computer on a disk", is it?

Yeah, I agree with you. wouldn't be too hard to do. This computer on a stick seems to be essentially the same idea Knoppix pioneered.

[Senator Bedfellow]

I guess it's nice that someone's mass-producing them, but Google shows lots of pages on how to roll your own if you're so inclined:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=linux+boot+usb&btnG=Search

[Luke Skyfreeper]

It's not a computer. It's just a Linux distribution, with some software, on a flash drive.

You can already do this on a 10-cent cd.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

The significant difference would be that you can't easily save files back to a cd.

[Lazamataz]

') Quick, before the "Dell was making this five years ago" crowd arrives. ;'D

Dell was making this five years ago.

[martin_fierro]

It works beautifully. Simply tell your computer to boot to the USB drive.

Except that you need a computer to run it.

I'll be impressed when you can plug a monitor, keyboard, mouse & printer into it. Oh, and a CAT5 cable.

[neb52]

http://www.boldata.com/html/prod.cfm/view/1/list_id/218.htm

[martin_fierro]

OK, now I'm impressed.

(pretty cool, too)

[martin_fierro]

(Memo to self: Try copying Knoppix ISO to a USB drive later)

[neb52]

Yeah 2.9 lbs is not to bad to carry around. Apple needs to stick a finger down the minis throat and get it smaller. Perhaps that is why they are switching to Intel to take advantage of the advances in nano-itx boards?

[Senator Bedfellow]

http://rz-obrian.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de/knoppix-usb/

[neb52]

I had read a while back when looking into this stuff that somebody got a windows version installed on a memory stick, but it didn't run perfectly.

[Phsstpok]

:') Quick, before the "Dell was making this five years ago" crowd arrives. ;'D

Well, no, but they did offer the utilities to make their own USB flash drives bootable with another OS, primarily DOS, about 2 years ago. You could use those utilities to load up a flavor of Linux, if you wanted. It's pretty straightforward.

That's what this is, just a normal USB memory key, except they've pre-loaded an OS on it. There's no processor on the USB key, so it's misleading to call it "a computer on a stick."

I've been working, off and on, to get Windows XP to boot from a USB key (and now USB hard disks) because most of the utitlities the techs at my company work with need to run there, not on Linux. The problem has been that the first things XP does when it boots is reset the USB interface. Kinda brings the entire boot process to a screaching halt. XP SP2 is supposed to allow you to bypass that, but I haven't had time to go back to this since that came out. The closest I got to getting XP on a USB device to boot was to set up a RAM disk first, move the kernel there and then continue the boot process. It works, but it's a pain in the behind to set up and maintain.