Memorex Mini TravelDrive U3 512MB review

Your home PC is bound to contain lots of useful applications that you miss as soon as you have to use someone else's computer. Memorex's Mini TravelDrive U3 attempts to help out by letting you take all your favourite applications with you.

It looks like any other USB flash drive with 512MB of storage, but inside it's quite a bit smarter. Usually when you want to use an application, you first have to run an installer, which places numerous files in various places on the hard disk. While not a problem on your own computer, this might not be practical or permissible if you are using someone else's PC. To get around this, you can simply plug in the TravelDrive U3 and run specially modified U3 programs off it without having to install anything on the host computer.

The U3 programs are accessed via a Windows Start menu-style Launchpad that slides in and out of your System Tray when you plug in the TravelDrive. It comes preloaded with anti-virus, password and backup utilities as well as a copy of Mozilla's Thunderbird email program. Other U3-modified programs, both free and paid for, can easily be downloaded, installed and removed using the Launchpad. Remember that installing too many programs could leave little room for your data, although you can get the TravelDrive in sizes up to 2GB.

We tried out the U3 versions of Thunderbird, Firefox and OpenOffice and all three ran as expected. We were able to access our emails, email filters, bookmarks, cookies and Word and Excel documents from multiple PCs simply by plugging in the drive.

While its large file performance was excellent, it struggled a little with our small-file test. However, performance was good enough for running our installed applications and we didn't notice any significant difference in load times when compared to using an internal hard disk.

The TravelDrive U3 is undoubtedly easy to use, but it is possible to replicate its capabilities on any USB flash disk. The website www.portableapps.com maintains a selection of modified open-source programs such as gaim, Firefox and OpenOffice that can be downloaded on to a flash disk, portable hard disk or iPod and used on any computer without further installation, just as with the TravelDrive. But the installation process isn't as seamless and the selection of available programs is much smaller. Still, if the applications you want are listed, you can buy a conventional 512MB flash drive for as much as 50 per cent less than the Mini TravelDrive U3.

We also wish more programs were available in U3 form. But if you need to carry your applications and documents with you with the minimum of fuss, the TravelDrive is a well-designed option.