What the heck is U3?

I suspect a chunk of the current portable software world came from the long-abandoned U3 technology.  The program came with quite a few flash drives and enabled certified program system, a familiar menu, running programs from a portable device.

A view of the program:

Despite seeming legitimate, the general consensus on the site has been: if you see it, remove it.  The program came on the scene back in 2005 and then faded away back in 2010 without much notice.

Although there were only a hand full of threads on PFW that address it, mostly there to recommend use of something else as the program had serious stability and system issues:

• What is the point of U3?
  

• U3 Application Tool

• U3 can be a pain

• Retooling U3 CD-ROM partitions

​One wonders what could have been if Sandisk would have been willing to take this on as a more serious project.  It could have been huge.