How To Transport Computer Files

The first and most obvious option is email the files to yourself. Various free email services allow you to send and receive a reasonable size of file. Google's' Gmail allows you to attach files of up to 20MB while you have 2 GB inbox to receive it, while Yahoo! gives you a 10MB attachment size, but you have unlimited storage in your inbox.

The second internet option is online storage. The best of these is probably MediaMax, which you can find www.mediamax.com. Once you've signed up for an account, you get 25 GB of storage - although you can only upload files that are less than 10 MB at a time. While 10 GB is more than enough for most files, if you need more you can pay for an account - You currently get up to 1000 GB for about $30 (£15) a month- although prices are changing all the time.
If you have a Yahoo email address, you can use you Yahoo! login to access your own Briefcase (search for it on the main Yahoo page) which gives you access to 30MB of space for free. The only downside with online storage is that it may not me suitable for your most sensitive or private files, as while this method is at least as secure as email, there's always a slim chance with either that your passwords or logins could fall into the wrong hands.

The most secure option is to copy the file onto a physical storage medium that you can carry with you. Assuming your computer has a drive that can burn them, a CD will hold around 750MB of information, while a DVD will hold 3.5 GB. If you need more, you can buy flash memory chips of up to around 10 GB in size, or external hard disks which currently run up to several hundred gigabytes in space. One note on these - bear in mind that a Mac's can read both Mac and PC formatted drives, while a PC can only read a PC formatted drive, so for maximum compatibility, format your drive on a PC even if you use Macs, as you never know when you'll need to grab a file from a PC.