DOWNLOAD: MS USB Flash Drive Manager (Standard)

USB flash drives are compact and easy-to-use devices that are similar in use to your computer hard drive. USB flash drives slip into your pocket, conveniently around your neck or on a keychain for ultimate portable storage. USB flash drives in 2005 can hold up to 4 gigs of data, which is over 1700 three-minute songs (66 hours) recorded as MP3s or about three times the content of a standard compact disc. If you share a computer, USB flash drives are a great way to store personal information. USB Flash Drives are also a good great option for saving information and share it with others. When you have many things to save and share but you have a limited number of USB Flash Drives, you will need to backup the information and restore it when needed. This is where the Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager application can help you.

The Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager will help you backup and restore presentation, pictures, songs and applications from and to USB Flash Drive devices and take them with you. The application can also help you to classify and name USB Flash Drives images (for instance "My network configuration" or "The pictures for my grandma") and lets you see this name whenever the USB Flash Drive is plugged into the computer. Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager is available for Windows XP only.

Download: Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager (Standard)
News source: Microsoft

I'm probably missing something obvious here, but what's the point behind this Manager - aside from another layer of MS cr*p on my computer?

I have a USB drive. I also have a PC card Compact Card drive. Plugged in, my XP machine recognises both, I can create / shift folders and files (named whatever I like) over to them and access them all via a shortcut on my desktop. I can (as with any drive) name the drives whatever I like.

If its another automatic backup device, fine - but beyond that, it's no great step forward *and* it requires .NET Framework to be installed on your machine, so that's two levels of additional cr*p on the machine.....

Pass.