Autorun files on Promotional Memory Sticks - Good idea or Bad idea?

To autorun or not to autorun that is the question! Many clients are faced with the dilemma of whether they should add an autorun facility to their Promotional Memory Sticks.

The benefits of a branded memory stick to promote your company are well known and this has led to the huge growth in the demand for USB memory sticks from corporate companies. But for some companies putting their brand on the USB Memory Stick is not enough - they want the USB Memory stick to start an application or program when the memory stick is used..

This technique is called ?autorun? and as the name implies when the USB Memory Stick is pushed into the USB port the computer will automatically run a program e.g. a movie file.

The advantages of this is that it ensures the user is presented with the information the client wants them to see without having to find the information themselves. This makes it a very intuitive process and ensures the information on the Promotional Memory Stick is delivered. However there are some hidden pitfalls:

Nuisance factor. If one of the objectives is to ensure that the USB Promotional Memory Stick is a keepsake that the end user will access on a regular basis then its worth bearing in mind that every time the user wants to access or save a document they will have to run through the dataload programme. Fine for the first few times, but thereafter they may find this an irritation and relegate the memory stick deep into a draw!

Autoruns will not work on Win 98 or 2000 operating systems ? beware there are still many users out there with these systems. You will also need to ensure that the appropriate code is written into any autorun for it to work on Mac operating systems.

Some corporate firewalls restrict autoruns, so the danger is that the end user will never see the data.

There is a middle way, why not consider loading the data onto the USB Branded Memory Stick with an icon labelled ?Click Here To Start? and allow the user to access the data when they want.  This data can be protected so it would not be deleted, but overcomes may of the issues detailed above.

So whilst there are a few clear benefits of installing ?Autorun? files on Promotional Memory Sticks there are some clear pitfalls to be aware of. If in any doubt contact the team at USB2U and they?ll be happy to advise and talk you through the options.

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