When I see my niece hunched over like she's a brittle boned 90 year-old because she's carrying an 80 lb. backpack, I seriously worry that all these kids are going to be arthritic or crippled by the time they're out of school. SanDisk is hoping to address this issue by providing a way to carry heavy textbooks on their tiny Cruzer USB drives instead, on a special secure drive called BookLocker. The books would be purchased (with proprietary DRM) over the Internet and updates and corrections would be downloadable as well. The books on the drive would be accessible from any PC, and highlighting and notes are retained over multiple sessions. Books would also be searchable. All the necessary software is on the drive so nothing needs to be installed when using a secondary PC.

Details and white papers are available at SanDisk. From EverythingUSB.