Use an iPod as a USB drive ?

[Sarah Reichelt]

On 5/11/06, Kay C Lan <lan.kc.macmail at gmail.com> wrote:
> Further to the tangent.
>
> At the beginning of the year my son's teacher recently requested that I
> purchase a USB thumbdrive so that my son could easily transfer files to the
> class computer for printing - he takes a G3 PB to school, the class computer
> is  windoz. I personally thought just unplugging the USB printer cable and
> plugging it into the PB would be a very reasonable idea but for 'reasons'
> the USB thumbdrive was what the teacher wanted. So, not having bought one
> before I logged onto my Mac User Group forum and asked for recommendations.
>
> The first response I got back was to buy and iPod Shuffle. At first I
> thought it was a joke, until I did some further investigations:
>
> Iomega 1GB Thumbdrive = US99
> iPod Shuffle 1GB = US99
>
> The Iomega does nothing but store data!

Yes, I did exactly the same for my 3 boys. The Shuffles are very tough
so they can withstand the school environment, they don't require an
extra cable and they have good battery life (no screen helps) so they
last the whole day at school.

My only tip would be to buy the sports case. The standard lanyard
attaches to the lid, not the shuffle itself, so the shuffle can fall
or be pulled off. The sports case not only provides another layer of
protection, it makes sure the whole shuffle is attached to the
lanyard.

And the weirdest things I've seen the kids do? My eldest (who wants to
be a musician) playing a Mozart sonata on the piano from memory, while
listening to jazz on his shuffle. When I suggested this was perhaps
not a great idea, he responded "But it's not very loud!" :-)

Cheers,
Sarah