Convenience & weight. I don’t want to carry even a 2.5” HDD-based device with me when travelling, if I can avoid it. The Zalman device needs more power than many USB ports will happily provide. And an external CD-ROM drive means (usually) dual cables, an bringing a bunch of blank CDs with me, and the time it takes to burn them, and… etc.

For my purposes, the 16Gb stick is *more* than worth the $185 it’ll cost to get it to Canada.

-Adam Thompson

mailto:athompso@athompso.net athompso@athompso.net

(204) 291-7950 - direct

(204) 489-6515 - fax

From: roundtable-bounces@muug.mb.ca [mailto:roundtable-bounces@muug.mb.ca] On Behalf Of Kevin McGregor Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 12:07 To: athompso@athompso.net; Continuation of Round Table discussion Subject: Re: [RndTbl] isostick - the optical drive in a usb stick

Nice idea, but... $125 for a 8 GB device?

On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 11:22 AM, Adam Thompson athompso@athompso.net wrote:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/elegantinvention/isostick-the-optical-dr...

The concept is definitely viable, since Sandisk did something very similar in their Cruzer line of products, except you can’t update the contents of the fake CD-ROM drive yourself on a Cruzer.

I’m buying one!

-Adam Thompson

athompso@athompso.net

(204) 291-7950 tel:%28204%29%20291-7950 - direct

(204) 489-6515 tel:%28204%29%20489-6515 - fax

_______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.mb.ca http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable

You don't have to burn an (arbitrary) ISO image onto optical media before booting it. Yes, ISOLINUX-based ISO images can be converted to USB easily enough, but it's not generally possible to do so with arbitrary El Torito images.

I don't always have a burner, blank media, a USB CD-ROM drive, and enough (or high-power-enough) USB ports to plug said drive in. This lets me boot any ISO image with nothing more than any standard USB1.1+ port, assuming the computer can boot off a USB CD-ROM drive in the first place.

When re-provisioning an older Dell server recently, for example, this would have saved me almost an entire day's worth of time.

-Adam Thompson athompso@athompso.net (204) 291-7950 - direct (204) 489-6515 - fax

-----Original Message----- From: roundtable-bounces@muug.mb.ca [mailto:roundtable- bounces@muug.mb.ca] On Behalf Of John Lange Sent: Friday, July 29, 2011 12:23 To: athompso@athompso.net; Continuation of Round Table discussion Subject: Re: [RndTbl] isostick - the optical drive in a usb stick

I'm kind of confused; if the system can't boot from USB, how does this make any difference?

Or maybe I'm just not understanding what problem this is solving...

-- John Lange www.johnlange.ca _______________________________________________ Roundtable mailing list Roundtable@muug.mb.ca http://www.muug.mb.ca/mailman/listinfo/roundtable