While walking pass the shops in Sunway Pyramid one day, this little gem caught my eye. Although it's hard to tell from this picture but this, my friends, is a PC Card Clik! drive soldered to a USB interface.

It is smaller than my old Clik! drive, has no need for adapters and most importantly, runs on a USB interface. I immediately dropped the RM 680 the shop keeper was asking for and brought it back home.

This device is actually not an Iomega product but rather manufactured by a licensee of the Clik! technology - a Taiwanese company called Optomedia Electronics. (At least that was what was written on it). But luckily it uses the same drivers as Iomegaware was provided with the device. After checking the Iomega's new Pocket Zip site though, it looks as if Iomega is also making one that looks exactly like this drive.

The moment I got home, I popped open the case... Well, I didn't know at first that the PC Card was soldered onto the USB interface. I thought it was just plugged in. :P The truth is, the PC Card was opened up and the USB interface directly soldered onto the PC Card pins. Either way, you can't remove the PC Card and use it in a notebook.

After I put the thing back together, I booted into Win98 first and installed Iomegaware. Installation went flawlessly, of course. Then I plugged the drive into my USB hub... That was the first time I saw the inadequate USB power supply warning. Seems like the USB Clik! drive needs a lot of juice so you'll have to either give it a root socket (one in your computer) or just power up your USB hub. After rectifying the situation, the system immediately recognized it as a removable drive and it was ready for use.

File transfers are MUCH faster of course, although a word of warning if you do get one of these drives. Windows LOVES to delay writes and because the Clik! disk is manually ejected, the drive has no way of telling you whether it has finished writing or not. So, the safest way to eject ANY Clik! disk from any type of drive is to listen to the drive and make sure there is no activity for about 10 seconds before you eject the disk.

Anyway, as the drive worked as expected in Windows 98, I rebooted into Win2k which is my real testing ground. Right after Win2k booted up, the New hardware detected... pop-up appeared and I realized that I should have unplugged it first since I need to install Iomegaware before the drivers would be installed. That's when I discovered something wonderful...

The New hardware detected... message changed to something like 'USB Clik! 40' and to 'Mass Storage Device' before changing to 'Generic Disk Volume' and then... nothing. I went into explorer and there it was - the Clik! drive just staring at me, WITHOUT any driver installation!

I now have a small (both in size and capacity), unpowered (no adapter required), fast (USB!) portable drive which doesn't need drivers in Win2k! (This also holds true for WinME - drivers are not needed in WinME as well) Later on, I also discovered how to install the driver in Win98 without needing to install Iomegaware first. I'll describe this later.

This turned out to be a real blessing for me because as a solution developer, I have to periodically bring moderately-sized files to my clients, most of which have either Win98 or Win2k and USB ports! No more lugging multiple floppies around or worrying if their CD-ROM drives can read a multi-session CD or not.

Best of all, the drive came with a nice little pouch - big enough to fit the drive, USB Cable, a Clik disk and a 3.5 inch CD into which I burned the Iomegaware so I will have access to the driver for Win98 systems.

So, if you're working for a software company and you want to push medium-sized files to your clients easily (provided they HAVE a USB port), then THIS is the device to get!

• The media is small, you can carry lots of them with you and large files can be spanned across Clik! disks with various programs available out there.
   
• It's USB! Transfer speeds are fast enough to ensure you won't fall asleep looking at the read light blinking.
   
• It's small! The whole pouch is about the size of a CD case.
   
• No power adapter needed!
   
• No drivers needed in Win2k or WinME, simple driver install in Win98/SE

But if you're a hip & happening gadgeteer and if you decide to get this drive to transport all your Counter Strike scripts and settings to your favorite cyber cafes after reading this article, DON'T do it! Why? Because.....