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In my daily life, I use many different technologies, most of them expensive and high tech, except for my USB memories, which are cheap and widely use. For this article of the series on Technologies for Entrepreneurs, I deal with this basic but very important technology.
About some 12 o 13 years ago I purchased my first laptop. At that time I was studying at the university and until then, had used desktop computers and floppy disks to transfer my files. However, this laptop didn’t have a Floppy Disk drive, so I had to find an alternative. I search the web and found something called USB Memories. I purchased one, which cost me about US $25.00 and had a capacity of 32 MB. Today I have a USB memory with a capacity of 16 GB, that is about 16,384 MB and it costs the same as that first memory.
Throughout these years, I’ve had maybe 5 or 6 USB memories. I’ve upgraded them to increase the capacity, but they have never been damaged. Initially I used it to copy my Word and Excel files, but with time I found it useful to copy other larger files, like photos, videos and music. So when a smaller memory wouldn’t do the job, I had to upgrade for a new one.
When I first started using USB Memories, they where quite the novelty and few users had them. The fact is that people didn’t know about them and didn’t need them. Today, it is a popular item and most of us take them for granted.
This type of memories are part of our life, are cheap, resistant and come in different presentations, such as sticks, cards and bracelets, among others. Also, our cameras, smartphones and tablets, use variations of the same memory technologies, but we don’t realize this.
Although USB memories are so important, some people have started using other alternatives, such as Internet cloud-bases drives. I still believe USB memories have some advantages, but it’s nice to know we have other alternatives. In fact, I believe this other solutions are complementary for better and more robust solutions.
Many of us have been saved in many situations by one of these memories. Also, when we didn’t have one, we might have wished to find one. For their small size and versatility, this is one of the best technologies we can use as an Entrepreneur, a Professional or in our personal life.
So next time you use a USB Memory reflect upon this. We don’t realize their importance until we miss them, so be grateful for this simple, yet great technology.
Image taken from Flickr.com
