- The Good: Simple to use, provides good measure of security for files; can be used as fingerprint scanner to control Windows login; useful programs bundled with package.
- The Bad: Scanner takes practice to master; requires a high-powered USB port.
- The Verdict: A very handy gadget if you carry files with you that need to be kept secret if the USB Flash drive is lost or stolen.
- Reviewed on: Hewlett-Packard Media Center m380n Photosmart 3 GHz Pentium 4 PC with 1GB of RAM, DVD and DVD-recordable drives, a seven-way media reader, TV-input/PVR capability, Maxtor 120GB IDE and 250GB SATA hard disks running at 7200 RPM, an HP F1703 LCD panel, a 128MB NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 video card, and Windows XP Media Center Edition.
REVIEW:
Modern USB Flash drives, also called memory keys or thumbdrives, let you carry megabytes worth of information with you wherever you go. But the problem has been how to lock those memory keys down in case you lose them.
Sandisk, one of the top manufacturers of Flash memory gear, has come up with a way to secure thumbdrives — using your thumb. Or any other digit, for that matter.
The company's Cruzer Profile (512MB or 1GB) is a chunky-looking Flash drive. It's about half-again the size of the average Flash drive because it has a lot of extra electronics built in to run a fingerprint scanner.
The Cruzer Profile, about the size of a pack of Wrigley's gum, is actually two pieces connected by a short cable. The first is the memory key, which plugs into any USB port and is recognized as a removable storage drive by Windows, Mac and Linux machines. No surprises here.
The second part acts as a cover for the USB memory key, and houses the scanner. It's on a short cable so that you can plug it into the USB port on a PC or notebook and place the scanner flat on a desk.
The two halves come apart easily, but putting them back can be a chore because they have to slide together in a finicky track. Sandisk should have put more effort into designing a package that clips together better.
The scanner's design is excellent, though. Unlike most fingerprint scanners, you don't just press your finger against the sensor. You have to press it, and then draw it flat across the scanner so that it can read your print. It takes a bit of practice to get the pressure and speed right, but I had it mastered after a few practice tries.
The USB Flash drive has two partitions. One is public, and anyone can read the files on it. The other is protected and encrypted — you can't even see it on a computer's file manager until it has been decrypted.
When you plug the Cruzer Profile into a computer's USB port, it activates an auto-run program on the public partition called CruzerLock 2. That program asks you to scan your finger — if it recognizes the print, it unlocks the encrypted partition and you can use the Cruzer just like any USB Flash drive until you unplug it, at which point the partition is automatically encrypted again. Simple and easy.
You can set the Cruzer Profile up to recognize your fingerprints, or those of several people if you prefer (you have 10 "slots" for prints that the software links to two graphical hands to make things easy, but anyone's prints can be stored in those slots). It's just a matter of scanning their digits a couple of times so the Cruzer will recognize them. The program for "enrolling" fingerprints is a snap to use, walking you through the process with simple graphics and text tips. Nothing is stored on the host computer either — it all runs off the Cruzer Profile, so you can unlock and read the encrypted information on the drive using any computer.
There's another neat little feature tied to the Cruzer's scanner, too. You can use it to control your Windows login. If the Cruzer is plugged into the computer's USB port during bootup, a small program called CruzerLogin will let you scan your fingerprint instead of typing in a password. If the Cruzer isn't plugged in during bootup, the system simply asks for your test login and password. Slick.
And another program included on the drive, called CruzerPass, ties into Windows Explorer. It's a simple program that lets you assign fingerprint scans to log in to secure sites, so that you don't have to remember complex logins. You can log in simply by scanning your fingerprint to visit your bank site, for example.
The only real drawback to the fingerprint scanner is that it requires a high-power USB connection. It won't work if connected to a low-powered hub, or to the USB pass-through connections in most keyboards or monitors.
And the best part is that you don't have to pay a huge premium to get the scanning capabilities. The 512MB drive sells for about $99 (U.S.), and the 1GB drive for about $199.99, which was not much more than the going rate for drives in these capacities when this review was written. Scandisk also throws in a backup-and-compression utility called PocketCache, and a program called CruzerSync that synchronizes Microsoft Outlook data from your desktop so that you can take it with you on the Cruzer Profile.
The Cruzer Profile is a little bulkier than USB Flash drives with similar capacities, but it's extremely handy if you regularly carry files around that you don't want others to be able to read. This is such a useful feature that I think will become standard on all USB Flash drives as the price of the scanner electronics comes down.