Creative Uses for Old USB Flash Drives

Lock & Unlock Your Computer

You can lock and unlock your computer with a physical device, pretty much like they do in the movies. Use the free PREDATOR application, which turns a USB flash drive into an access control device: a key for your computer. When you leave your PC, unplug the USB stick and your computer will be locked. When you return, plug it back in and your computer will be unlocked. It’s like using the Lock function in Windows, but you don’t have to type your password when you return. When you unplug your USB flash drive, your open windows will minimize and your screen will go dark, plug it back in and your screen will turn back on.

Quickly Connect to Wireless Networks

Windows includes a feature that can save your current wireless network’s name, password, and other information to a USB stick. You can then use the USB stick to quickly connect to your Wi-Fi network on other computers without typing the password over and over again. In fact, you can even use this USB stick to quickly connect an Xbox 360 to your Wi-Fi network.

To save your Wi-Fi settings to a USB flash drive, click the wireless icon in your system tray, right-click your current wireless network, and select Properties. On the Connection tab, click the Copy this network profile to a USB flash drive. Click the Next button and Windows will copy the settings for the configured network to your USB stick. Connect the USB stick to another computer, and then double-click the setupSNK.exe file on it to install your network profile on the compute.

Give Your RAM a Boost

You can use it as external additional RAM to increase the overall performance of your PC. This feature is called ReadyBoost.
via Neeraj Wagh on Quora.

Basically, ReadyBoost helps out slow hard drives by caching some of the data over to your USB flash. So a ReadyBoost-compatible memory stick lets you take advantage of the lightning-fast seek times on flash drives, allow you to access your data quicker.