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The briefcase was mostly for storing files that would be synced between devices. The general idea was to allow loading contacts and documents onto your PDA, editing stuff on the go, and syncing it back.

Sync primarily happened via either a hardwired serial connection or wirelessly via infrared. The infrared sync worked, but was finicky and required that the infrared sensors on your laptop and PDA be directly facing each other.

I only played with this after I'd graduated and started making enough money that I could buy used PDA's just to see what they were capable of.

I used the briefcase with my first 32MB flash drive to keep school files synced between home and the computer lab (and with tons of space left over!).

I always assumed that the briefcase was for stuff my dad did. I don’t think he knew what it was either.

Briefcase is as handy for portable drives such as Zip drives. Yahoo also had an online version was much more restrictive