Dietplan6 P3 is delivered on a 256Mb USB 2.0 Flash Drive - a small, lightweight storage device that plugs into the Universal Serial Bus (USB) port of your computer. It needs no separate power supply and has an optional neck-cord and an extension cable that can be used if your USB ports are awkwardly situated at the back of your computer. The drive can be used by Windows 2000, XP and Vista directly, without installing any additional software, and although Dietplan6 P3 will run on earlier versions of Windows it is not recommended. The flash drive appears as an additional, removable disk drive in Windows Explorer or “My Computer”using the next available drive letter after your hard disk(s) and CD drive(s).

The flash drive is delivered with your copy of Dietplan6 already installed. To run, simply click on the shortcut that is at the top level of the removable drive - or copy the shortcut to your desktop and run it from there. All your work is saved in the database that is on the drive itself, so you can unplug the drive when you have finished and take everything with you. Then plug the drive into any other desktop or notebook PC and carry on using Dietplan6 exactly where you left off.

There is no need to install Dietplan6 onto the host computer, although you can do so if you wish - in which case the copy of the software on the flash drive is disabled until the second copy is de-activated. You can make backup copies of your data from the flash drive (and store them on your hard drive or on CD) in the same way as you can back up a conventionally installed version.

The flash drive uses the USB 2.0 standard, which means it can transfer data to and from your computer at the rate of 480 million(M) bits/second. However, if the USB port(s) on your computer conform to the earlier USB 1.1 standard (pre-2002) the data rates will be limited to 12Mbits/second. Dietplan6 will still run, but may be noticeably slower, particularly on start up. If you have a (desktop) computer with USB 1.1 ports where you will be using Dietplan6 regularly, you may wish to consider buying a USB 2.0 extension card costing around £12-15.