isostick

i've been using this device for about 2 months. It has saved me time and frustration in the field and at home. I work on back office servers to financial equipment to automated payment kiosk that needs to be running at all times and i dont have time to fiddle around with external cd-roms, floopies to run a certain diagnostic program or re-image a terminal. No more guessing if your brand name usb stick that you created will work on pc your trying to fix. You do how-ever have to manipulate the bios to boot from 'elegant-flash' or 'elegant-cd-rom', and move the boot priority to '1st' or you can use F8/F12 to select boot option. It will NOT work with UEFI bios (as of 8/6/2013), it must be booted as 'legacy' in order for it to work, and that might be hit or miss. The author did state that a firmware update is in the works. Overall this iso-stick is great!

I bought one of these after borrowing one from a coworker. Even though that particular experience let me know that this device couldn't necessarily be trusted to boot successfully on all hardware, it worked enough of the time that I decided I should go ahead and get my own.Unfortunately, it's not clear to me that the manufacturer is shipping a beta-quality product with little or no quality control measures. Mine is defective fresh out of the box - it can read, but not write (regardless of what position the write-protect switch is in) to microSD media. I've tried numerous microSD cards from numerous brands, all of which are confirmed to read/write successfully, but none work with my isostick.I'm willing to tolerate quirks with its software and compatibility with certain systems, but shipping a DOA device is pretty unforgivable, especially when testing basic read/write functionality is a pretty simple QA task.

The isostick does exactly what it says it will do. It's very convenient when compared to carting around my giant folder of discs, much more portable. Now I just have a little pouch for some microSD cards (not included, unfortunately). The isostick works as a boot drive on any PC I've so far used it on, despite warning that it might not. This device has simplified my on-site tech work immensely. I am very pleased with the utility of this product.I have but 2 points of contention.First, I wish they offered these (another model, perhaps) with faster onboard flash. The designers specifically chose USB 2 as an interface because microSD cards cannot keep up with even this data transfer rate. If they had gone with onboard flash, they could have upgraded to USB 3 and really made this impressive. Considering the use cases for this tool, it would save me and others boatloads of time, even moreso than it already does. I used to use a USB 3 flash drive for the same purposes as this drive; I ditched it due to the isostick's increased compatibility. However, the speed difference (when I could get it to work) between my old flash drive and the isostick is very much noticeable. I would have paid a premium for this.Second, you can definitely tell that this device is meant for the technically apt. While any technician worth his salt will be able to get this to work, it's definitely not as easy as plug and go. There are some initial steps to be followed before you can use this device. Nothing too strenuous, mind you, but the interface could use a little more polishing. For example, it would be nice if the isostick automatically prepared any microSD card inserted into it with the appropriate formatting and files (isosel, etc.). Or to be able to flash firmware without having to first press a (tiny) button to get the isostick into the appropriate mode; my former router from 2002 can do this, why not the isostick? Not that this is necessarily bad, but you can just tell that concerns like this were secondary.Update: This is totally abandoned. Isosel was never updated for UEFI, and the code, which was supposed to be released at the end of 2015, is still MIA so no one can work on this. Also, it died on me. I know that electronics have a limited life, but I didn't really use it all that hard. Replaced it with an HD enclosure with USB3 and an SSD inside, which puts this thing to shame.

This actually could be a great tool. The IsoStick is a great idea. Compact and at the ready, boots up to your bootable isos. The problem is that it lags behind current technology and continues to fall back. It can't boot a UEFI machine unless you edit the config file to place the iso you want into the 'boot lineup'. No menu appears for these systems and sometimes normal bios systems.The developer is a great guy. Responsive and willing to help, but just can't seem to put the time in to make this product a success. And it could be a success were he to do so. It is small & portable. And when it works, very, very useful. But it doesn't work all of the time and it becomes tedious to jump through the hoops to make it work (put the isostick in another computer, edit the config file, save, exit, go back to the machine you want to boot.).I thought about returning it, but decided that it could still be useful, it's just not my 'Go To' tool.I wound up buying a Zalman ZM-VE300. It's what I wanted the isoStick to be. A simple, just use the manual toggle to put the iso on stage and boot (both of these tools may require booting from the bios/uefi boot menu or editing the bios/uefi to boot from the device). It's not as small, but certainly easy to carry and does its job.That said, I'd pass on the IsoStick if I knew then what I know now. But I can still definitely use it, so it gets 3 stars. Further development could prompt me to give it a higher rating. Time will tell.