Compact Flash Reader: can be used as a keychain drive?

[chiggachu]

I am looking into buying one of those USB keychain drive things, but they are way too expensive. Do you think I can use a normal USB Compactflash Reader instead? Like this one:

Zio reader

Could this work on any computer, or do I have to install drivers on any machine that I want to use it on? I think the USB keychain drives have their own drivers built into the memory...would I be able to emulate that?

 

[chiggachu]

anyone?

 

[MrBond]

The SanDisk ImageMate reader I have works fine on my pc without a driver, but I'm running XP. I haven't tried it on pc's running other os's. That Zio reader has drivers available for it, but then again, so did my sandisk, I just never installed them.

 

[John]

Typically Win ME/2K/XP will recognize the USB drives without having to install drivers. You may have to with 98 though.

 

[DieHardware]

Sure, I've been using my SanDisk ImageMate reader like this for nearly two years(did have to install drivers on the win98 box though).

 

[VTrider]

Sure you can use a CF reader and a CF card like one of those USB keychain drives. I have both, just bought a 128mb USB 'pendrive' for $80.00 from over at Newegg and also recently started using a 128mb 'smartmedia' card and reader for the same purposes. I bought the SM card and reader both for $69.00 also from Newegg.

Both these devices do pretty much the same thing, the SM card+reader 'is' a little cheaper and unlike the USB keychain drives, you can always buy additional SM or CF media for the reader (which will probably get cheaper and cheaper). I am now thinking about selling my little USB keychain drive because it's pretty much a redundant device in my system.

-VTrider