U3 - R.I.P.

[Chris Gohlke]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.betanews.com/article/SanDisk_Microsoft_Join_to_Replace_U3/1179158853' target='_blank'>http://www.betanews.com/article/SanDisk_Microsoft_Join_to_Replace_U3/1179158853</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Just four months after its big coming out party at CES, U3 -- a platform for running applications from USB thumb drives -- has already been put on the chopping block by parent SanDisk. The company has decided to join Microsoft in creating a new standard. U3 was first introduced in 2005, backed by a host of supporting software and hardware vendors. Popular applications including AOL's Winamp, Cerulean Studios' Trillian, McAfee Antivirus and Skype among others were offered in U3 versions to spur its adoption."</i><br /><br />Without Microsoft on board, U3 required a software install to be able to work on a PC, kind of defeating the purpose of U3. In theory, this is still a great idea, so hopefully SanDisk and Microsoft will get the new standard out soon.

[Philip Colmer]

The rumour is that the new standard will be based around Virtual PC technology. I believe that VMWare have something similar already where you can access a VM system just by running a piece of software and without the need to install anything. My understanding is that there is going to be a similar capability for Virtual PC coming out.

[Crocuta]

Well heck! I really liked U3. Not that there isn't a world of opportunity for improvement, and the virtual machine solution sounds great, but I wish they'd get the new system ready before ditching the old one. In the meantime, there is always portableapps.com, which doesn't require any special hardware, but it won't support a few of the U3 apps that I bought. Oh well, that's life.