SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4 GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive SDCZ6-4096-E11

The thumb drive performs well and is up to Sandisk quality. Having 4GB capacity is great, I had outgrown my 1GB Lexar device. I currently use 3.5GB to carry around software as a computer professional as well as some personal files. The drive is slim allowing insertion in 'tight spots' at the rear of computers.

The feature that attracted me to this unit is the U3 software and the bundled apps such as Avast anti-virus and Skype. Being able to run your favorite apps on any computer using your preferences is wonderful. The drive can be optionally protected via a password which is important to me since I keep scans of important documents on it 'just in case' they go astray.

The U3 software isn't as good as expected however, here are my findings about the U3 software.

It is slow to run on older computers. I have come across one computer it crashes on everytime I insert the drive (Medion brand computer). Since my files are password protected I can't...Read more

To clear up some confusion, the DRIVE works fine on a Mac, the SOFTWARE doesn't work at all. When I inserted this drive into my Mac (OS X.4.7) my computer said it was a blank CD and I needed to select which program I wanted to use with it. I selected Disk Utility so I could erase the drive and selected Mac OS (Journaled). Once I did that (and provided a name), it works just fine. It's very fast for transfers and I'm a happy camper.

If you want to keep this drive available to transfer data back and forth between Macs and PCs, do what I just suggested, but select MS-DOS File System for the formatting. This will ease the U3 software on the drive, but who cares. Note: if you do format the drive for this format (and not Mac formatting) file transfer on the Mac will suffer a performance hit. That's just the way it is. When you run a PC formatted disk on a Mac, you have to have some emulation going on and that eats up cycles. However, if you place a Mac formatted disk into a PC,...Read more

I travel 3-5 days per week in my job and end up using many different computers. That's why I love U3. I use Firefox to keep all of my bookmarks and plug-ins available on any computer. I use Thunderbird to manage my personal e-mail. I use Zinio Reader to store and read the several digital magazines to which I subscribe to avoid paper. I can do all of this from any computer with USB anywhere I go without having any effect on that computer. This is great given my company's incredibly rigid IT policy (absolutely no personal software on company machines, including laptops).

U3 can be a bit slow, but not frustratingly so. You can set your computer to not run U3 on connecting.

The drive has great capacity in a small and durable package. I recommend it to any traveler.