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It’s a pen, it’s a lipstick, it’s a Keychain Drive!

I was a speaker at a legal conference last spring and was collaborating on the PowerPoint presentation with my fellow speaker. When we went to copy the presentation from my laptop to his, none of the usual methods worked. Fortunately my co-worker had a keychain drive handy and within a very short period of time, the presentation was on his laptop and we were ready to go.

Keychain drives, also known as USB drives or flash drives, are tiny devices that resemble a highlighter pen or lipstick. They are so lightweight and compact you can actually fit them on a keychain! However, don’t be fooled by the diminutive appearance of these little drives. They hold more than several floppy disks with storage capacity ranging from 8MB to 2GB. The devices are plug-and-play which means installation is as easy as plugging the device into the USB port of your laptop and letting your laptop’s operating system do the rest.

There are many advantages to using a keychain drive. I have an older laptop that contains both a floppy and CD drive. However, I’d gladly exchange both drives for a keychain drive and save my neck and shoulders from bearing the extra weight. Today many laptops do not have a floppy drive and while the CD drive is standard issue, it is heavy by comparison. There are no magnetic parts in the keychain drive, so you can’t accidentally erase the data and these drives are supported in a variety of environments including Microsoft Windows, Apple and Linux.

Depending upon your storage requirements and budget, you can buy a keychain drive with 128MB storage for under $50. At the top end of the range, a 2GB drive can cost between $600 and $1,000. Drives can be purchased with additional features such as security (password protection) and write-protection. Some include an 802.11b WiFi access point such as the Soyo 128MB Cig@r Pro. Sony offers a 128MB Micro Vault™ keychain drive that has a tiny built in fingerprint scanner that locks your files in the event you lose the drive.

Where do you buy one of these clever devices? With the number of vendors selling keychain drives, you won’t have to go far. Your local electronics or office supplies store should stock them and of course the Internet is always a great resource.

So the next time you need to go to a real estate closing, you won’t have to lug mountains of paper or your laptop. Just copy your closing documents to the keychain drive, pop it in your pocket and head to your meeting. Once you’ve copied the documents to your client’s PC, you’ll be able to work side-by-side on any additional changes to the documents; faster, more efficiently and without the headache of remote collaboration.

¹ Please note the services and products mentioned in this article do not necessarily reflect KKL's recommendation of the products or services listed. This listing is done for informational purposes only.