At work, in order to do some testing, two of our engineers ordered a half-dozen 128-MB USB "memory sticks". When the testing was complete, everyone in the department "inherited" one - at least, until the next round of testing.

I was planning to buy one of my own, but over Xmas an alternative occurred to me. My niece got a portable MP3 player, which has 64 Mb of built-in storage, doubles as a voice recorder and FM receiver, and takes additional memory cards up to 512 Mb. As near as I can tell (she didn't get the extra memory card) the computer simply recognizes this as two removable drives. You can store about a dozen tunes to the built-in memory, and then you should be able to use the memory card as an extra drive to store as much personal data as you have room for. (The SD cards themselves are tiny, as others have pointed out, and can also be used with other devices apparently.)

Downsides
- it's larger than a USB stick, but not by much.
- the memory card can't be used without the player (or other ancillary device)
- it needs a battery to operate (I assume)
- probably more expensive
- your kids will want to borrow it unless you get them (each) one of their own (see point # 4 above) <img src="images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Upsides
- in keeping with our usual board philosophy, it does more than one thing
- can purchase multiple replacement storage devices to hold more stuff in less space (a second SD drive takes up less space than a second USB stick)