Douglas Smith and his three estimators regularly thank good fortune for the day, three years ago, when they first tried a thumb-sized marvel of technology -- the USB flash drive. Today you won't find any of them without three or four of the devices in their pockets.
The reason? The now ubiquitous thumb drives, also called memory keys, have relieved Mr. Smith and his co-workers of the burden of data storage, data transfer and especially the hassles involved in handling paper -- in this instance wallpaper-like rolls of blueprints.
In those dark, pre-USB drive days, the estimators would visit architects and clients to pick up blueprints for work that Smith Brothers Contracting Corp. wanted to bid on. For three generations, the Ancaster, Ont.-based company has specialized in installing drywall in industrial, commercial and institutional projects. Using blueprints to estimate job costs is essential to successful contracting. But the size of the blueprint packages -- often 40 or 50 pages, as big as 60 centimetres high and a metre wide -- was daunting.
The estimators would have to copy the blueprints, lug them back to the office and make even more copies. The blueprints would have to be catalogued and stored well beyond the completion of the work.
"It was a real pain," Douglas Smith says. "You had to do it all by hand because the files are just too big to e-mail."
Today, however, handling blueprints is a snap. The estimators still go the client's or architect's office to see the documents, but then they plug a flash drive into a Universal Serial Bus port on a computer and download the blueprints in a matter of seconds. Then, back at their office, they repeat the process -- uploading the drawings to their own computers, where estimating software helps them work out costs.
Those flash drives not only transport the large blueprint files but serve as backup storage as well.
"I have one in my pocket right now," Mr. Smith said in an interview. "It is a 2-gigabyte drive that cost $120, and it holds four or five complete sets of blueprints. Those darn things are amazing."
Amazing indeed, said Barry Dowd, president of Integrated Business Intelligence Corp. of Hamilton, which specializes in solving small-business IT challenges. He can't do without them.
"I carry presentations on them," he said. "If anything happens to my laptop I can always pull out the USB drive, plug it into a client's computer and go right ahead as if nothing has happened."
Rick Atkinson, director of merchandising at Staples/Business Depot Ltd. of Richmond Hill, Ont., which has 270 Staples Business Depot stores across Canada, said USB flash drives are de rigueur among his suppliers.
"They come in and hand you a USB flash drive and say keep it," he said. "Everything is on it -- product information, price lists, everything. It greatly speeds the pace of doing business and saves enormous space and costs in storage."
Thumbnail USB flash drives are only about four years old. But they have seized the imagination of those who are the least bit computer savvy, said Eddie Chan, a research analyst at IDC Canada.
"It is their enormous storage capacity . . . combined with affordable prices and portability," he said. A 64-megabyte drive can be purchased for as little as $7.99. "There are even some top-end models that offer limited applications such as e-mail and file management."
Granted, there are still downsides, Mr. Chan added. Most of the drives have a limited reusable life. They have a slow data-transfer rate and as a result cannot handle sophisticated programs. They also can pose a security threat to corporate systems.
"What I think they represent, though, is a major step toward easily portable computing," he said. "New generations of USB drives will be able to replicate your home or office computer on any other computer with a compatible drive."
