[USB _________ (fill in the blank)]

Good grief. Yea... erm... all of the above and more, depending on who I'm talking to.

At the school where I worked when these things started to become available (and we where weaning people off floppies, as drive maintenance is an arse) my device (that I used as exemplar) was on a key chain... but my keys quickly broke it. The teachers typically had Memory fobs on a lanyard around their neck. The pupils often had pens, which act as a pen in lessons and pull out the memory device in CS/IT classes. I also advised them that many MP3 players could be purchased cheaply and could double for transferring homework... which is a good ploy because it is beneficial both to kids and parents.

Myself, personally, I think the kind of storage mechanism is not relevant to the user. I remember people still referring to the Hard Disk Drive as Winchester drives, "the Stack" (which, as a low level programmer I found really annoying) or "the Platter" or "Rigid Disk" (as oppose to the floppy disk) long into the early 90's.

Whether it is a "Hard Disk" or a "Hard Drive" or even (occasionally) "Fixed Disk" is still debatable, and users often get confused between a "Partition" or "Volume" and a "Disk" or "Drive". And understandably so, as very few OS differentiate the two visibly.

I think "USB Memory Stick" is what my mind internally calls them, but I'm very aware that they would be more practical on IEEE 1394 (Firewire), and are available (but less popular) with that connection. Some work on magnetic storage and are still tiny, and connect to USB, some work with battery backed memory. Memory Stick is, I grant confusing, but so is card, as there are "cards" for internal memory upgrade when the motherboard won't support more RAM. So I qualify with "USB", then I know what I'm talking about... which is always a good thing.

Perhaps all that is really relevant to the use, is whether it is a "Fixed", "Removable" or "Network" storage device? I like the underutilized term "volume" as this is book knowledge sensible, but since it referrers to a partition of a data device, it can lead to confusion when there may be only one volume to a device, or several... or with RAIDs several devices to a volume. But books are the same, one or many books to a story or collection or many stories collected in a single volume or tome.

"Disk" certainly only applies to devices whose physical storage medium is a spun platter like an LP record / Laser Disc / CD / DVD / BRD / HD-DVD / Hard or Floppy Disk / MO Disk etc. not to static or battery backed memory devices. And a "Drive" requires a motor to move the medium under the read head, or the head over the medium, which still applies to all the

Disks but would also cover Tape drives / Punch Cards / Punch Tape / DATs etc. (DAT Tape, or MD Disk are also annoying as the acronym already contains the post qualifying word "Tape" or "Disk")

It doesn't matter what your OS says it is, most are frequently either inaccurate or just down right WRONG! But we can blame the classic Mac "RAM Disk" for that.

The more we virtualize these things for reasons of backward computability (applying a format and number of heads, cylinders and sectors to a memory chip ) the more confused the OS is going to be, about how to explain what it sees to the user in real-world terms. A classic example was the Windows 95 installer asking the user to insert the install CD in drive A: and click "OK" to continue. Is it any wonder we get confused?

[Windows 2000 Revolutions Pack]

Onos!!! It's dead?

I can help starting skinning support and maybe have a look at patching TextOutA and TextOutW with Freetype for ClearType font render feel... Any chance of opening the project to the community Tihiy?

[Err... yea... well... hullo... I guess.]

Okay... I'm not going to rave here... much... I'll leave that for elsewhere.

I'm not net shy, I blog here and if I ever get to posting my art it will be here

I've been reading the tips, tutorials and posts here for some time. I'm a long time fan of the internals of Operating Systems and an old, old, geek.

I code... I game... I'm a net head... I'm a netiquate pedant and a buggerous cantankerous old fart.

I guess it's just time I stopped lurking here and started poking my nose into all your business and throwing in my two pennies worth.

Oh... by the way... I'm speak English, but I'm not American... I'm European, I'm British and I'm not English... in that order.

Sees yas,

bob out.