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Comment by cookiecaper | Hacker News Reader

Almost everyone still uses USB as the baseline for almost everything. Few people use Bluetooth mice or keyboards. Networked scanners and printers are expensive when compared with USB appliances. Gb network is only standard on high-end components, most are still 10/100. USB drives are the most common form of data transfer because of the assurance that they will be compatible with most machines.

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>USB drives are the most common form of data transfer because of the assurance that they will be compatible with most machines.

At $orkplace I have the 'opportunity' to see how non-technical folks work - In the last three years floppies seem to have finally died out, though there are still a few holdouts who will burn to CD-R rather than using one of those newfangled USBthingamies.

Those of us who breathe the internet tend to forget that we live in a world vastly different to that of a large proportion of the population.

USB drives are also good for storing changing files that need to be moved between work and home. You can burn more files to a CD but that takes more than 30 seconds,

A company where I used to work got paranoid about its employees walking out the door with its precious intellectual property on those things, and installed something called 'Hibun' to prevent just that. From then on, anyone who "needed" to move data to a USB drive had to use one specially made for the Hibun system, and a "key" to permit transfer in a form that could only be read on another "authorized" computer.

That was... fun.

And, let me guess, it was probably trivial to break for the black hat guys?

I can't say I really know. I didn't hear about anyone breaking it, certainly.

> You can burn more files to a CD but that takes more than 30 seconds,

CDs are 700MB. You can get GB+ USB thumb drives for free.

Perhaps IChrisI was a bit sloppy, and actually meant DVD-R?

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