Seagate’s FreeAgent: external drive and portable environment
I hit up the Seagate folks last night to get a quick demo of their portable FreeAgent Go drive. Sure, portable USB drives are a dime a dozen these days, so I wasn’t interested in the mundane specs; 160 GB, 5400 RPM, USB 2.0 if you are. No, I wanted a demo of the application that resides on the drive itself: similar to Mojopac, you can run many of your programs right on the drive if you connect it to a Windows PC. We spent about five minutes running in the environment housed on the drive and I found very little lag in the performance.
If you don’t want to carry a notebook with you, but want your environment available, this is a worth a look. It’s definitely small enough to carry in a gadget bag: see the comparison pic to my Q1P. Expect to pay around $140 if you search for it online.
Not that many people will need the 160 gigs to carry around their programs. Everyone else would be better served getting a USB stick (I use a Sandisk Titanium, keep it on the keyring and it’s rugged enough that I’m not even a little worried) and then install Portable Apps on it (http://www.portableapps.com) You get a nice launcher and a ton of cool apps that leave no trace behind when running on the PC, which is great in case you’re not on your own machine.
Works like a charm. I added a couple of TiddlyWiki files that I use as a couple of small “wikis on a stick” – great to keep some info with you and available.
No argument; it’s not for everyone, but it provides the same general benefits of the Portable Apps solution. It has a similar launcher and leaves no trace behind when you unplug it. It’s definitely more expensive than a USB stick, but would be handy for folks that want to carry digital entertainment (videos, music, etc…) that might require the higher capacity.
I agree with cr0ft on PortableApps. I have a very fast 2GB Geil with my apps on it. I added my Password Corral program and set up Thunderbird to “leave files on server”. I also export my laptop Bookmarks to the memory stick to stay current when I am away.
It works very nicely when I cannot use my laptop
..wiley
Houston, TX
I have one (80GB, which is 7200rpm). This allows me to carry a rather large development environment as a virtual machine (35GB). That’s something you can’t fit on a stick (yet!!). So it’s horses for courses.
Now if only vmware were a portable app…
I have one and wrote up some first impressions here: http://fmcpherson.weblogger.com/2007/06/17
Another thing, you can’t install just any software into the Ceedo virtual information, unlike Mojopac. Either go with what is on the Ceedo site or buy an extra program to be able to install other software packages. I personally think Mojopac is better.
Vista support appears to be spotty. It works with Vista in that you can run the software but there are little things missing. I do find that the Ceedo software and the Sync software work very well in Windows XP.
As for why do I use this drive rather than just a stick. One of my main uses for this drive is to back up my music from the NAS on my home network.
I have the 160GB version and I got it a Buy.com for $99! It’s absolutely wonderful!
Why buy Mojopac when you can have full Windows XP/Vista running from external USB drive? It’s like PDA vs. UMPC.