It seems we’re going to see more and more USB flash drive with fingerprint protection in the future. Recently, FingerGear and Atmel Corporation introduced the Bio Computer-On-A-Stick USB Flash Drive. It’s similar with Computer-On-a-Stick USB disk, but the new one has a built-in fingerprint protection.

The Computer-on-a-stick series is a bootable USB Flash Drive, which contains the OS and all the vital desktop applications. It is based on Linux 2.6.x Kernel with Gnome GUI Dekstop. Some of the application included are Office Productivity Suite, along with the most commonly used home and office applications, Mozilla FireFox web browser, a PDF Creator, a zip compression utility, and GAIM, an Instant Messenger which communicates with Yahoo IM, MSN Messenger, AIM, and Napster, among others.

FingerGear Bio Computer-On-a-Stick features Atmel’s FingerChip sensor for one-swipe secure data access, and a large font LCD display. There are two partitions: public and private. The public partition is on any Windows, Linux, or Macintosh PC with a standard USB port. But the private partition is encrpyted and can only be accessed when booting from the device, by using a login password or fingerprint authentication.

The price is US$149.

[ More Information About FingerGear Bio Computer-on-a-Stick ] [ Via Engadget ]