Geeze, and I used to think that my 256meg was teh shiznit.

I've got a few SanDisk 1GB Mini Cruzers, and I think one of the 2 GB ones, also a couple of the 512 MB ones. They've been reliable and crossplatform. I've not used any with the biometrics or otherwise in them though.

You can get 1GB from Sandisk for $14.99 at Microcenter.

I have a friend who's very mobile, and I'm pretty sure he's running Thunderbird and maybe other apps off of a secure Sandisk drive. I think.

I used a couple of 1gb key drives from Sandisk, with lots of cross-platform and no problems. I haven't heard anything about biometrics, but you could run encryption software off the drive without having it built in.

As for running software off the key drive, well, that's where it gets pretty cool. You can pretty much run your own personalised Firefox, Thunderbird, etc, off your thumb drive, which is pretty handy, especially if you use other people's computers occasioanlly or need to use your parents', in my instance. There's a couple of good sites for it.

TinyApps: [link]

Portable Apps: [link] Which is my favorite, because they're apps suite is, pardon the pun, pretty sweet.

And you never have to mess with someone's settings again.

you could run encryption software off the drive without having it built in.

How does that work when you're cross platform? If I've encrypted my content using the software that comes with it, is the whole drive unusable in OS X or Linux?

Oh going back to the software firewall thing. I put in Comodo, and after some teething trouble getting it not to block my network connection, it works fine.

In terms of what a software firewall does that anti-virus won't to: I'd forgotten how much spyware, and overenthuriastic checking for new drivers is built into standard software these days until I had to retrain a new firewall. For example my printer driver wants to report to HP every time I print. Adobe reader, in spite of my setting it to check for updates only every 30 days tries to check for updates every time I load it. (Given that a lot of my work these involves downloading and reading pdf documents blocking that is a real time saver. And yes I'm aware that Adobe patches real security holes. Once a month I unblock and allow it to update. ) Most anti-spyware software won't catch these things; and if they do what good do they do: you don't want to remove your printer drivers or adobe reader, you just want to disable the spyware aspects.

Dell to offer Ubuntu Linux preinstalled and supported on it's desktops and laptops: [link]

Bold move. Totally a good one in my humble opinion as anything to keep Microsoft on it's toes is good. Plus the idea of a granny buying a PC for email and the web and NOT getting the PC infected with 4903 viruses and spyware things is good.

Cool. I think Ubuntu could make a good OS for basic stuff, but it does need some more polish. And fix that mencoder bug

iTunes help!

I have all my music on an external firewire drive. In preferences I have pointed iTunes to the correct folder on that drive, but none of the songs show up in my music library (in the iTunes screen) unless I double click the file in the folder. Is this because I lost a directory file when the old computer died? Will I have to double-click every song? Are my ratings and playlists lost forever or can I get all these things from the iPod? Which leads to the next issue...

The new computer only has one firewire port. All the music is on an external firewire drive. The external drive does have an additional firewire port. Can I connect the iPod thru the external drive?

I'm not sure what the problem is (but I think it's fairly common for external drive users). Did you try the "Reset" button in the Preferences / Advanced screen? Did you try specifying the folder again? Do you have "Keep iTunes Music folder organized" checked?

Not sure if any of these is/are the solution....