In the mood for a true crime story? Well, here's one … and you are the victim! It's unbelievable but true. You and I, all of us, are being held hostage! It's even worse than that, because this extortion could end up costing us lots of money, time and frustration.

But it's a fact: Your expensive PC/laptop, all your files, work and e-mail, the hours of toil and trouble you put into your career, are all being held hostage by a couple of lines of simple code that can disappear at anytime, with the result being that you will have to shell out big bucks for a new computer, or at least spend time you can't spare on what often ends up to be a wild goose chase!

I'm talking about drivers, those little controller pieces of software that we don't think about until it's too late – which is when they disappear by being erased or damaged by a virus or any of the other daily PC hazards.

Despite their attempts to appear intelligent, the sad truth is that computers are pretty dumb; they wouldn't know to come in out of the rain during a hurricane. And of course, they don't know a video card from a sound card from a modem card.

That's where drivers come in; they identify hardware that is part of the computer to the operating system, which can then take advantage of their capabilities. But without those drivers, your PC won't know what to do with those add-on peripheral cards – and some integral functions may be affected as well.

So, how did those external drivers get on your computer in the first place? Well, if you bought your computer "off the shelf," with basic hardware and software installed, you probably never gave the term "driver" a second thought, even if the dealer told you something like "all the drivers are already set up."

If you, or a technician, added a piece of hardware, like an ADSL modem, for example, the driver most likely came on a CD, which installed itself when you inserted it into your drive.

Any idea where that CD is now? I didn't think so! Some drivers (like the ones for HP printers) come with update agents, which occasionally scan the company Web site for new versions of drivers, and Windows XP has the capability to scan sites for driver updates and even for initial installations of driver software.

But those are not the most reliable backups for your driver collection; Windows often can't find the driver you need or downloads the wrong one; and driver update agents only work if the original driver is functioning properly.

Which it might not be if your system gets attacked by a virus or other computer malady, with the attendant software damage caused by such events; and it certainly won't be available if you end up having to reinstall Windows or even reformat your hard drive (shudder!).

Now, what are you going to do? Call in a high-priced computer tech? Spend hours tracking down the phantom driver on arcane Web and ftp sites?

One way or another, you're going to pay! Even worse: As in any other industry, manufacturers are always looking to make new money – and that means constantly "improving" their products and pushing them onto consumers who already bought their products in the past.

Okay, I think I've done enough to sufficiently raise your awareness of the importance of caring for your drivers.

But you can beat the system. While there are sites that let you request drivers from others who might have them, a little planning will save you a lot of trouble.

MyDrivers will take care of all your driver needs, backing them up and restoring them at your leisure. MyDrivers is free for 15 days, and afterward it costs $39. But you really only need to use it once.

Install the program, let it scan for drivers, and back them up in all the formats MyDrivers allows you to – as .cab files, as a single installable .exe file, as a backup to a folder.

Then copy all the backups onto one – no, make it three – CDs, floppy disks, network sites, whatever. Then take a nice, long nap – the first one you'll be able to take as a free person, no longer under the threat of driver extortion!

Flash Drives Part Two

There are reasons to avoid the U3 platform despite its obvious convenience over the plain vanilla flash drive.

U3 dissenters in the flash drive world cite security questions (http://tinyurl.com/rfsya), hassles in removing the platform (http://tinyurl.com/ejqc6), and the possibility of SanDisk, the principle promoter of U3, turning into the Microsoft of portable flash drive computing, especially with the company's recent acquisition of M-Systems, the only company in the flash memory market that might ever have posed a serious threat to SanDisk's dominance in this market.

But even those who complain about U3's proprietary platform and pending dominance appreciate the idea of carrying their PCs on a keychain.

And so, parallel to U3, there has evolved another "platform" – one that entails re-encoding or otherwise manipulating popular software packages into portable editions suitable for use on flash memory drives.

This group isn't well known yet, and frankly, I found out about it only as I was writing this article.

The chief promoters of this setup can be found at http://portableapps.com/. They provide, among other things, a portable application suite consisting of Portable Firefox (Web browser), Portable Thunderbird (e-mail client), Portable OpenOffice.org (office suite), Portable AbiWord (word processor), Portable NVU (Web editor), Portable Sunbird (calendar and task list), Portable FileZilla (FTP client), and Portable Gaim (instant messenger).

And all this, says the site, will fit onto a 256 MB flash memory drive with room to spare for documents (http://portableapps.com/suite.)

The advantage of non-U3-based portable apps is that they can be used on a non-U3 flash memory drive, of course. Since U3 is a proprietary platform, there's no easy way to install it into your garden-variety USB flash.

But you don't need to install anything in order to use a portable Firefox or Thunderbird – other than the application itself, of course.

If you wish to take the portable app plunge yourself, go here. They have 143 such programs available, along with complete instructions on how to prepare your drive and install the apps.

In fact, there is even an application for portable-app-equipped USB drives strikingly similar to the U3 Launcher, called Pstart – the difference being that while the U3 Launcher runs from the USB drive, Pstart gets installed on your hard drive, automatically sensing when you plug your portable into the computer's USB port and loading shortcuts to the flash drive's portable apps.

Portable apps, like U3 platform devices, claim to leave no traces of activity on a host computer's hard drive.

Note that this does not mean that drives like these are undetectable; a savvy system administrator could implement a bunch of tricks – such as recording system activity with Windows' Performance Monitor or installing a keystroke recorder, which could rat out users who prefer to keep their computing activities under the radar.

Naturally, no ToThePointer would want to use someone else's computer in such a manner.

In that sense, both U3 and non-U3 portable devices offer the same advantages or disadvantages. In fact, despite the hype, many similarities exist between U3 and non-U3 portable devices – so much so that portable apps can generally be used on U3 devices. (I haven't been able to determine yet if the opposite is true.)

Personally, I think the portable app is the method I'll use in the future. 

I read in a recent issue of PC World online that Samsung announced a 40-nanometer chip that can be used to create a 64 GB flash drive.  They expect to sell them by the end of the year.

As soon as they come out, I'll replace my U3 with the Samsung and won't even use portable apps but instead place my whole development system onto the Samsung.