Lexar Jump Drive Update

The situation with the Lexar Jump Drive security feature confused me, so I did a live chat with a Lexar rep. Turns out I was wrong about how it works. The drive can be used on any computer, but it must be configured first. This means that you have to tell it how much space on the drive should be password protected and how much should be "public". To do this, the JD Secure software must be installed on a computer. Then you can do the configuration. After that, the drive can be used on any computer anywhere.

Since we don't allow any software to be installed on the lab computers, any patron with a Lexar secure drive needs to configure it before they can use it in the lab. We will not put them on the admin side and let them install it. This may apply to other brands with security software as well. The Lexar is the only one we've seen so far. My SanDisk drive doesn't have this feature.

IMHO, all this could have been made much clearer in the documentation that comes with the drive. I trolled some newsgroups and got the idea that the JD Secure software had to be installed on every computer that you used the jump drive with. I think Lexar took something that was easy and made it hard. These drives are a convenient, reliable and inexpensive way to save and transport files. I understand the need for security but let's make it easy for the folks, OK? Sheesh.