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w/ bigger & cheaper flash drives available every day, what is proper "retirement" program to offer to our older/smaller (& more expensive) flash drives of yesteryear?
and,
is there an unofficial minimum size flash drive one should use these days?
still using a few 1GB's as the minimum here for specific tasks that they fit, otherwise it's 2GB or 4GB for general on the road use. the 512MB's and smaller, have become "family projects," trying to fit them into Lego blocks, keychain fobs, and other inanimate objects that seem like fun at the time...
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trickle-down to the kids after being properly formatted. The kids lose ' em eventually.
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I have a 32MB drive that I purchased back in 2001 when the only place to find them was online. I still use that to print CD face labels on my printer. I use a 512 (freebie) and a 4GB every day. The 4GB is my daily back-up of purchase orders and hard drive contents for work.
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give to my cheap co-worker
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Donate them to a local school? Or better yet, donate them to my school! I have many kids that would love to have one!
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I use them.
Or if I don't need them, I give them away to friends/family that can use them.
They are nice to have on hand to transport files for use during client meetings. I format the thumb drive on my Mac (as FAT16) and add the client files prior to using it on their Windows machine. (This procedure ensures against any Windows viruses from its use with other clients.)
They are also useful as a compartmentalized redundant backup system for important files.
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They are good for camera firmware downloads/updates. I have a lot of the so I am going to buy a bunch of new cameras.
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I use them a lot like we used to use floppy disks...
Put files on 'em to pass around.
If I get 'em back, great... if not.. not a big deal.
But I consider anything over 256 to be still "useful" and don't give those away lightly.
I'd love to be able to buy like a 50 pack of 128's or 256's to pass out to the teachers to bring work back and forth from home.... most of them haven't exactly mastered emailing things to themselves yet.
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blusubaru, that's exactly what I was thinking. Remember the days of memory card risers?