USB flash drives
USB flash drives come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors--some are even built into watches--but they all make your data truly portable. Far superior to floppy disks and CDs, these USB drives can store a whole lot more in a smaller package and are nearly indestructible. If you just need to move a few files between your home and office, you don't need to lug that laptop around. Small enough to fit on your keychain, these miniature hard drives are affordable and offer a great way to transfer data.

The Meritline Rist Memory Watch is exactly what it sounds like: a watch with flash memory onboard. Made of attractive, silver-colored metal, it has a thick band and the heavy feel of a high-quality timepiece. The face of the watch, which measures 1.5 inches in diameter, is white and features silver numbers, dashes, and hands, little bits of which glow in the dark. The time-and-date-adjustment knob sits on the right edge of the face. On the left is the mini-USB port, covered by a cheap-looking piece of plastic. Conveniently, you'll never have to wind or replace the battery, because the watch is powered by the movement of your body--a very cool feature. When connected to your PC, the ManagerX software lets you password-protect the data on the watch, but if you forget your password, you'll have to reformat and will lose all the data. The watch also comes with a retractable 2.5-foot USB cord and a disc containing driver software. The 256MB model we tested costs about $100, or about 40 cents per megabyte. That's a bit expensive, memory-wise, but considering it comes in the form of a nice watch, we think it's worth it.

The Iomega Mini is 3.37 inches long, 1 inch wide, and 0.37 inch thick--about the size of a tube of lipstick. Dressed in a snazzy silver-and-gray plastic casing, the Mini has a belt clip and a cool metal ring that fastens around the length of the drive to prevent the cap from falling off and to allow for a keyring attachment. The Mini supports Iomega's Active Disk technology, which lets you use certain applications on any computer you plug into, even if the computer doesn't have those programs installed. A number of Active Disk-enabled programs are available for free on Iomega's Web site, including Preclick, a photo-editing app; PocoMail for e-mail; Musicmatch Jukebox, a digital-music player; and many more. The Mini is available in capacities ranging from 128MB to 1GB. The 128MB model that we looked at costs around $60, or about 46 cents per megabyte, which is relatively expensive compared to other drives.

Available for around $40, or 15 cents per megabyte, the attractive Crucial Gizmo, which measures 3.25 inches long, 1 inch wide, and 0.37 inch thick, isn't the smallest drive we looked at, but it won't obstruct neighboring USB ports when you plug it into your PC. Crucial provides a brief data sheet on how to use the drive and includes a USB extension cord--a handy extra if your computer's rear USB ports are hard to access. The Gizmo includes Crucial's Secure-D software, which allows you to password-protect up to 97 percent of the drive. The Secure-D setup file comes loaded on the drive, but you can access it only on systems running Microsoft Windows 2000 or XP. Also, if you forget your password, not only will you lose all your data, you'll have to return the drive to the manufacturer to be reset. The Gizmo does not include a driver disc, so users on pre-2000 versions of Windows will need to download driver software from Crucial's Web site.

Now available on the Internet for about $70, or 14 cents per megabyte, the SanDisk Cruzer Titanium is an exceptionally durable and well-equipped USB flash drive. We stomped on it, tried to crack it in half, and chucked it really hard at a wall, and it was still wholly intact. The Cruzer Titanium isn't exactly the smallest USB flash drive we've seen. However, measuring just less than 3 inches long, about 0.75 inch wide, and a touch more than 0.25 inch thick, it's not so big that it would obstruct neighboring USB ports on the back of most PCs. The Cruzer Titanium comes preloaded with three applications: CruzerSync, which syncs up with Outlook (but not Outlook Express) and loads compressed versions of your e-mail messages (with or without attachments); CruzerLock, a competent password-protection and encryption utility; and CruzerCache, which lets you back up your PC's files on the Cruzer Titanium. The Cruzer supports most recent versions of the Windows and Mac operating systems and boasts transfer speeds up to 15MB per second when using a USB 2.0 port.