Helpful tech hint: lots of USB flash drives these days are coming with what's called U3 software on a separate partition that shows as read-only. It apparently tries to give you familiar menus and settings when you plug your drive into different computers. This stuff automatically installs and runs on whatever PC you plug it into. (Unless you don't use Windows, in which case it just takes up space on the drive.)

Someone out there must like this, but I just want a device to store files on, not some pushy application trying to unify my digital life. Fortunately, you can get a program to reformat your drive as a gloriously empty vessel waiting for you to do as you choose with it:

http://www.u3.com/uninstall/default.aspx

The site will plead amusingly with you not to delete this precious, precious invasionware from your drive, but will eventually relent and let you download the uninstall program.