Tech Toys: Seagate FreeAgent Go

The last few weeks have seen some big changes for the travelling businenessman. Aside from the Asus Eee ( a tiny laptop that has spawned many immitators) to projectors not much bigger than the small dictation machines that used tapes before digital recorders appeared, from computer bags designed so that you can get your machine out - and often more difficult - back in easily as a result of the increasingly invasive "security" measures at airports to large capacity and high speed SD cards.

And a plethora of external hard drives.

The idea of using a hard drive outside the box is not at all new: the big problem to date with acceptability has been that the casing has been big, and the drives were not designed for low-power instances, so they were very slow over USB.

The latest generation of drives overcomes both of those. The Seagate FreeAgent Go works through USB2.0 at speeds that, in normal use, are not noticeably different from the internal drive.

In the box, there's the drive (which is very, very cute) and a usb cord. These devices are not cheap - and the failure to include a slip cover to protect the satinised finish is, frankly, miserable. You can buy a case as an optional extra - but there are actually better alternatives on the market, for example from Case Logic.Seagate could have put less LED lighting on the device and given a simple polyester cover to avoid irritation.

And you can also buy an optional dock - although frankly, we can't see why anyone would want it: it's just a USB cable with a big bit of plastic on the end, so far as we can see. It certainly doesn't add to the drive's portability.

But that's not a reason not to buy the device: for it's in use that this makes its mark.

With a capacity of 250GB - other models have more - this is serious storage. Already it has been pressed into use for long trips lasting several weeks where the user would need access to his desktop data - but the machine would be turned off. Solution? Copy all the data directories - including his local mail, to the Seagate. Copy the mail (Thunderbird, of course) to the laptop and use the Seagate as the data file system. On return to the office, copy mail back from the laptop to the Seagate, and copy the data from the Seagate to the desktop. It takes a while but it can be left to do its thing during a briefing, for example, on the first morning back.

Yes, of course, this can all be done with e.g. copying the data to a server and pulling it down over the 'net when required. But that is much slower - and it means that, in order to access that data you need to find a secure connection (if you don't fancy open wifi in an airport or hotel lobby) and perhaps access your VPN. Yes, that's good if you're in a country where the 'net works. Now imagine trying to do that in Malaysia where download speeds on 1.5Mb SDSL connections fall as low as 3kb/s. Or in the many developing countries that are still running dial up - such as parts of Manila where the service is running at 28.8k - a far cry from the services most of our readers are used to.

So, is the Seagate a gadget or an investment?

It's undoubtedly the latter.