Got flash memory cards? They aren't only
for your digital camera. Probably the
coolest yet overlooked ways to use your
flash memory card is as floppy drive replacement.
Think about it, a flash memory card is
really a form of storage disk.
Most notebook computers today don't come
with a floppy drive anymore. I've personally
been in situations where I needed to share
a file with someone and haven't been able
to because they handed me a floppy disk.
If you already own a card or a digital
camera, chances are you already have the
necessary equipment to read the card and
transfer files to and from them. If you
don't it's easy. Get yourself a flash
memory card reader - they are so inexpensive
these days you can even pick one up free
after rebate if you watch the deals. Hookup
it up to your computer and pop in the
card. It will show up on your computer
as a new drive. When you're ready to save
data to it, just drag and drop. It's no
different than a regular floppy or hard
drive. Once you see in this light there
is a whole bunch of things you can use
your flash memory card for and here are
5 ideas for you.
1. Use as a greeting card. Hey there's
always an occasion around the corner.
If you're already thinking of sending
a CD greeting card - use your flash memory
card instead. With the large storage sizes
you can afford to have multimedia in your
ecards too and when that person gets tired
of it, the card itself is a gift for their
computing convenience. As if that wasn't
enough, you can probably get by with less
postage too.
2. Use as media storage. One of the best
things about flash memory cards is how
much its small physical size can pack
in. With memory sizes up to several Gigabytes,
you could use it to store your media like
video clips, picture clips, audio files
and just about any downloadable content.
Its small size also makes it highly portable
without taking up valuable space on your
notebook computer hard drive.
3. Sharing files or transferring files
from one computer to another. If you need
to do this often, here's a quick tip.
Carry with you a USB card reader. Many
of them are very compact and no heavier
than your cell phone. Doing this has advantages
over carrying a flash memory drive. Flash
memory cards are smaller and a tiny catalog
of cards can offer you much more memory
than a flash drive. Better carry two things
than a bunch of drives.
4. Build yourself an ebook library. Are
you a book worm? One tiny flash memory
card can store a lot of ebooks since most
text based files are smaller than media
files. You can store whole libraries of
ebooks in various topics either on one
card or dedicate one for each topic you
are interested in. Again, they are easy
to share and very portable - you'll never
run out of reading material again even
when on the road.
5. Run small software from it. Yes, there
are tiny software that don't need to be
installed and can run from the card itself.
This is particularly helpful when you're
using someone else's computer. Now you
can carry your software with you too.
Now that you know - gather up those flash
memory cards and start using them. Just
because your new camera isn't compatible
with it doesn't mean you should let it
go to waste and the best part is, you
won't have to worry about obsolete cards
anymore.
This article was posted on December
06, 2005
