SanDisk Cruzer Titanium U3 USB Flash Drive Comments

I've had the 8GB version for some time and was initially very interested in using the U3 platform. Gradually however, I began to realise that support for U3 and in particular for application packaged to run portably on the U3 platform is fading rapidly away.

The first application I installed was Mozilla Thunderbird for U3. The only version available wasn't even up to the latest release although with Thunderbird this isn't a problem: it updates itself in place. For other applications though, they either aren't packaged for U3 at all or have not been kept up-to-date with the latest releases.

The solution has been to swap instead to the well supported PortableApps platform. Initially I installed it alongside U3 on the same device and that worked well. However, I have now completely removed U3 and converted over entirely to PortableApps and not regretted it for a minute.

PortableApps is not the only player though. You can consider instead SmithTech's Portable Menu, which does much the same job. As for U3, it's history.

I've been using the 1GB version for a long time (I don't have much files to take with me.) and it's the most indestructible thumbdrive I've ever used. When you drop it, you hear a solid metal thunk, not the sound of plastic.

A person drove over it with a car, with the thumbdrive propped at an angle to ensure highest 'damage', and other than some scratches it escaped unharmed. The same couldn't be said of the other thumbdrives sacrificed in the name of science, though... ;)