Using USB Memory devices

They have many names, flash memory sticks, but regardless of what you call them, any memory that resides on a usb device that you plug in to your computer should be used for the purposes of transferring from one device to the other, not for long term storage. As well, when you do plug your memory stick in to the computer, you should not be opening files and editing them and saving them to the device. What I am referring to is when you have a document that you are retrieving from the device to work on, you should be first opening it from the device and then saving it do your computer immediately. Either that or simply plugging the usb device in and copying the file(s) you are going to work on to your computer and then opening them from the computer. The usb device can remain plugged in but for the purposes of copying the finished work back to the device to be used at another workstation. I say this because with most word processing programs (word, word perfect), when you open a file and start working on it, it will perform an 'autosave' every 10 minutes or so (depending on what the settings are) but knowing this is happening, it is not a good idea to be working directly from the USB device because if for some reason you do unplug the device or the usb port becomes unavailable you risk the chance of losing your data and/or corrupting it.  This is very similar to when we used to use floppy disks for the purposes of saving word documents and then opening/editing them from the floppy directly.  Some would leave the floppy in all day and at the end of the day when they saved the word document before ejecting it, would wonder why the floppy was unreadable...typically this was because the floppy had saved data for the last time, since the magnetic properties of the floppy were basically worn out from the disk head reading/writing over and over within the same area of the floppy.  Although the new flash memory works differently with regards to the way it saves to the device, it doesn't matter if the device becomes unavailable by the accidental unplugging of the device.  Its just a little tip but one that can save a lot of frustration after a days work when you want to do nothing more than save your data and go home for the day.