"Iomega's portable external hard drives."

Product manager Jennifer Burl. You'd think they would have come up with a name with more zip to it. Aside from that... the concept is pretty cool. The portable 20 or 30 gigabyte drives can fit in a shirt pocket and connect to PCs through either a USB or FireWire port... .

"The strategy behind this is that we took a look at the proliferation of large files and lots of data in the marketplace and there was truly a need for people to have additional storage to what's internal to their PCs and then also to have additional storage to back up their PCs."

The 20 Gigabyte USB version sells for under 200 dollars. It can fit in your pocket... and Iomega says can take a fall without damaging your data... .

"If somebody's walking through the airport and they're rather tall and they drop it, we want the product to be able to work."

It could be useful for carrying large amounts of data between home and office. What Iomega does not include and some of its competition does... is the ability to play digital music directly from the device. And you do pay a price for the portability. That 200 dollars will buy a 40 gigabyte external ... non-portable... drive, due to be released by Iomega next month. . Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.