Hip data storage?!

And what could be hip about data storage? a parent logically might ask. Well, the makers of the teen-only hip-e computer get it (see my 9/10 issue). If you're a teenage early adopter, having a "flash drive" means you can store your tunes in a lipstick-size tube dangling "from key chains and backpacks - or even from the necks of users - as if pendants signifying a cult of convenient computing," the New York Times reports. In fact, I predict flash drives will be mainstream for teenagers in no time. Because of their high capacity, IPods are used as flash drives - people store Word docs and Quicken files on them to carry back and forth between home and office PCs (the way we used to use floppy disks). Floppies stored 1.4 megabytes of data, while flash drives store 32 megabytes to 2 gigabytes, the Times explains. That's a lot of tunes and photos! Seriously, some students are required to have them for school - a dad and Office Depot manager in Annapolis, Md., discovered that recently, the Times reports, when he saw "a gaggle of teenagers" clustered around a flash drive display case.