Using a
Thumb Drive
(the new Floppy)

The 3 1/2" floppy is rapidly going the way of the gentleman's spats. Try and buy a PC with a floppy drive these days.

The heir-apparent is the thumb drive (also called a USB memory stick, flash drive, etc.). You can buy them for less than $10 these days and ever the smallest, say 16Meg, can hold the same amount of files as 14 or 15 floppy disks. Amazing.

There are numerous types of thumb drives but they all operate similarly. For example the Kanguru drive, shown above and at top, works this way:

  1. Take the cap off and put it in a safe place (your pocket, for example -- the caps often get lost!)

  2. Plug the USB (flat silver metal end) into an available USB port.

  3. The Operating System (these days, expect to find Windows XP everywhere) should automatically recognize it and pop up a dialog box asking what you want Windows to do:
                    

  4. Chose Open folder to view files using Windows Explorer and press the [OK] button.

  5. You'll get a window showing the files on the thumb drive:

  6. Scroll to the folder you need and use this drive the same way you use the other drives on your computer. Copy files to or from the drive as needed. For example, you may want to save your working files (word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.) to your thumb drive to take them with you for your next assignment.