This PNY Attache USB drive is / flash drive / memory stick with a 512 megabyte capacity. It's about two and a half inches long, and is available in a various colours - mine has an outer case made of black plastic with a lozenge of transparent green plastic as an insert in the middle. It has a small, detachable cap covering the 'business end' - ie. the metal plug-in part that slots into the appropriate USB port on your computer.

I'm not a technical expert on USB drives, but have used them quite a bit to transfer data in the form of Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents, between computers. In fact my original Attache USB was given to me by my then employer to use just for this (I understand it cost about £10 to £15 at the time, and USBs with greater memory these days still cost about this much).

These flashdrives seem to have pretty much replaced floppy discs, and even CDs as a device for backing up / transferring / storing computer files and now that the early 'teething problems' with them seem to have been solved (more about that in a bit) I find them a much more user-friendly piece of kit - partly because of the small, easily transportable size, but primarily because of the enormous storage capacity that they have, which is much greater than a floppy disc or CD. In terms of the perhaps 20 to 30-slide Powerpoint presentations I used to need to carry about between computers, you would be lucky to get half a dozen of these stored on one CD but with a USB drive - well, I've never really reached the 'disc full' capacity with that yet, in practice.

The first USB I owned about five years ago looked exactly like the models still available today, but came with a small plastic CD containing operating files that had to be loaded onto each and every computer it was to be used with. This was very inconvenient, and there were issues with compatibility with older versions of Microsoft Office, and in fact I couldn't get that old USB to work at all on the (at the time) five year old laptop I was using. Happily, the USBs you get these days come preprogrammed with all the software they need to work already (and permanently) 'on' the memory stick - which means in effect that whenever you plug it into a new machine, it starts working automatically. A green LED flashes on in the transparent plastic insert on the stick when you plug it in, to show it's working - and when you remove it from a Windows-running computer, you also are supposed to carry out a quick 'safely remove hardware' procedure (you just click a box on an icon at the corner toolbar) to shut it off (although in fact, I've had to detach mine a few times 'unsafely' - ie without shutting it off first, and it's still been all right).

One slight issue with the Attache USB is that I've lost the cap, as it's so small and mislayable, which is a pain. This model does have a little hole the back, that you're supposed to use with a mini key-ring style round attachment to fit it to - I don't know, a neck strap or your actual key ring or something so you don't lose it. I didn't do this and accidentally ended up running over the stick with my car when I dropped it in the driveway - which isn't recommended though I was still able to retrieve the data from it afterwards before it finally gave out (it was crushed beyond repair). So these gadgets seem to be pretty robust.