As one of the resident IT computer peoples, I have to help friends and family out. Usually there’s no charge for my “services”, but I’m also a little bit harsher with them. Paying customers get respect. Non-paying friends get my foot up their bottom.

D**G: if I DL a game to my flash drive will it play ok on the computer?
Jason: ?
D**G: ive got the downlaoder for the star trek online beta, so i could just install it at home, but i have enough space on my flash drive so could I ‘install’ it on the flash and run it on my comp at home?
Jason: uh almost
D**G: okay
D**G: whats the issue?
Jason: you can download the installer file there yeah no problem
D**G: duh
D**G: but why not the whole dir
Jason: if it supports it, go right ahead
D**G: what do you mean ‘support it’?
Jason: like support running from a flash drive
D**G: thats a special thing?
D**G: how is it different from installing something on a non-system drive?
Jason: /palmface
Jason: are you planning on taking the drive and attempting to run it somewhere else?
D**G: yeah
Jason: then no.
D**G: ok
D**G: then im confused about those things you were showing me about those programs run from a flash drive
Jason: those are U3 applications from a U3 flash drive

Really? Ever hear of a registry key? Now I know what you’re thinking, and YES HE CAN install the program onto his flash drive from his computer AND run it “from” the flash drive. But he wants to install it on his flash drive from his work computer and then bring it home and run it there. Unless the program supports that, you’re SOL.

OK, so now that I’m done typing this, D**G comes back with another few zingers and I finally can call it what it is.

D**G: is it because it doesnt transfer data fast enough?
Jason: no, it’s because of a thing called registry keys
Jason: you’re more than welcome to try it out and see though

I figured this would end the conversation until the person either a.) tries it or b.) gives up. Unfortunately neither happened. I really should charge an hourly rate for this.

D**G: well no, i dont want to waste my time and my open beta copy on this. besides, now im curious about it. how would this be so different from having a solid state non-system drive
Jason: it wouldn’t really
D**G: well im gonna have to learn about reg keys anyway to get the rootkit off my lappy
Jason: say your startup drive is C: and you install a game on D:, then you take the D drive and move it to another computer. The game will most likely not function as the registry keys, dll files, and other misc stuff is not registered correctly etc. so the same problem would happen if you install onto your flash drive – it’ll work just fine on the computer you installed it using, but moving it to another system would probably not function.
D**G: huh

Huh indeed. And here I thought I explained it enough to keep the dogs at bay. Meh.