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Lexar Media, long known for its memory products, recently added to its JumpDrive line. With a street price of $60 for the 128MB version (or $90 for 256MB), the Lexar JumpDrive Traveler comes with software that lets you take your e-mail with you, synchronize files with another computer, and surf the Web securely.
Whenever you browse the Internet, you leave a trail of your activities on your computer. A history of the sites you visited, cookies, and temporary Internet files are all left behind. That may be okay on your own PC, but what if youre using someone elses?
When you plug in the JumpDrive Traveler and launch Internet Explorer (from the Traveler interface), all of your surfing activities are stored on the device rather than on the host computer.
In addition, you can store your personal bookmarks, history, cookies, and even temporary Internet files on the JumpDrive Traveler, so theyll be available when you surf using its software. In our testing, we did copy history data, but it wasnt available using the device. Lexar has promised to fix this bug.
Portable e-mail has always been a challenge. The device solves this problem, should your e-mail client of choice be Outlook Express. It can store your Outlook Express e-mail and access it wherever you are through its interface. This is convenient for those who intend to always use Outlook Express with their JumpDrive, as there is no facility for synchronizing mail between the device and another PC.
Though this e-mail feature may appeal to some, the lack of support for other mail clients (notably Netscape, Eudora, and Outlook) coupled with missing synchronization capabilities limits its usefulness.
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