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The Swiss Army Knife of USB Drives
Mudzy writes "The Tech Zone reviews what has to
be the coolest Swiss Army Knife ever made. The Swissmemory USB Victorinox is the
first knife to be equipped with a USB flash drive. " Besides 64 or 128mb of data, it includes such useful items as a ballpoint pen, red light, scissors, nail file, and not surprisingly, a knife.
These have been available from Thinkgeek for a while now. They also make a "travel version" without those fearsome weapons of mass destruction. (Meaning the scissors, nail file and that itty-bitty knife.) Not that the travel version is necessary, since the USB drive is removable.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
Until you can't take it on a plane with you.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
And a USB drive? Who are they trying to market these to? Well-kempt geeks?? *guffaw*
Shot by an airmarshall whilst trying to back up my data
a) Hasn't this been out for a while? b) Why do I want a USB drive I can't take on a plane?
Swiss army knives traditionally used out in the wild on camouts, hiking, fishing trips, etc.
The concept of this gadget is cool, but could someone enlighten me to the uses of a USB flash drive out in the wild?
Thinkgeek, OWNED by OSDN if I'm not mistaken, has been selling USB swiss army knives for months now.
/. has happily traded in sanity for advertising dollars?
Is it obvious to anyone else that
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
I have to wonder how this thing would hold up, though. I'm rough on pocketknives, and while it's true that there aren't many parts, I don't think it would take me long to render the flash drive useless.
Well, the site's already /.'d, but 64 or 128MB? I picked up a 128MB Lexar Sport a few weeks ago 'cause it was cheap, and have already found times when it wasn't enough memory.
Too little, too late.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Specifically, it can be used to circumvent the process of blood traveling through the aorta.
...storage devices.
I always have it with me, and it has my emergency backup documents plus it functions as an emergency boot disc. It also has all my contacts, registrations, passwords etc. Obviously it functions as a transfer disc too. The only thing it doesn't do well is function as a card reader, which would be the icing on the cake. Oh yeah and it plays music.
I have a nice SAK that I use for back country camping, during which time the USB drive does not get much of a workout.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
They should have used the dual xeon pocket knife.
You can backup your data and file your nails. If you do it that the same time, you're going to look silly rubbing your laptop over your fingers.
I'm not a doctor, but I play one in bed.
The webserver must be running on the beta model of the Swissmemory USB Webserver.
OK I just about understand this that its a good idea in that you won't forget both the USB and knives. However what next? Prehaps an ice-cream make with built in WiFi. The point is though its cool do we really need it?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
You will not be able to take your USB drive on business trips if you fly with hand luggage only.
--
semi dupe here. Oh well, at least its a nifty gadget.
Yes that's right, I used 'nifty' in a sentence.
pic of it here
Don't know about you lot, but I'm quite happy having them seperate. I've got a 15 year old swiss army knife. It's been soaked/dropped/heated and been through every other possible mistreatment and it's still great. I don't see one of these coping with that.
Will 128mb still be enough space for useful storage in 15 years, will we still have USB?
My way I only ever buy top quality tools and keep them many, many years. My technology I can replace whenever I like.
It's not only old news, it's also a dupe.
it includes such useful items as a ballpoint pen, red light, scissors, nail file, and not surprisingly, a knife.
Okay a few things:
1. Wow, a red light! Thats so...useful?
2. What the f*ck does a techie that buys this need a NAIL FILE for?!?!
"I left all my encryption keys at the Security screen."
I have an off-brand one that I formatted without reading the instruction booklet. Evidently, it had some proprietary stuff loaded onto it to give it full functionality, which is now gone. Half the time when I transfer data onto it, the MB used go up, but the data doesn't transfer. Any suggestions?
If this were an advertisement, the least they could do is provide enough banwidth for the first 1,000 of us to see the site.... Thank God for Google (the Cache)
As everybody seems to point out, you can't take it on a plane, which makes me wonder: How much do you think security issues have hindered sales of products of this nature? How long before victorinox starts selling swiss army knives without any type of blade? If they did, would they still call it a Swiss Army knive? And even if they did, how many times do you think the security guy would tell you that you can't bring it in only because it has the Swiss Army icon? Hmm.....
I'd bet you $100 to a bent penny that at least a dozen /.ers submitted an article about this gadget in the 2 weeks after it appeared, and that all of them got "rejected".
It looks as if an article has a higher chance of being accepted if it is (a) a month out of date, (b) a duplicate, or (c) both.
5 months ago:/ 139207 &tid=159
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/11
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Wierd that they didn't make a variant of the Cybertool with USB, since it is actually targetted at computer support people. A generic swiss army knife with USB doesn't make sense.
- Posted via Danger HipTop2 / T-Mobile Sidek!ck II -
Back in the day when MacGyver got stuck in that "smart building" and got attacked by dalek robots, he had to devise all kinds of things to stop them... if he had this he could have done a Jeff Goldblum-esque "upload virus" from his Swiss Army knife and have the rampaging robots under his control!
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
does it have a hasp?
free online diet tracking.
I had a Swiss Army knife for years and all of the parts either broke or got lost. If you want a real gadget knife get a Leatherman. The USB idea on a knife has been around for a while. I like the watch from Think Geek better.
The USB memory is only the first step. Now put a little GPS reciever in the knife, and let me load the USB memory with maps of the area I am camping/traveling in. It would need a little LCD screen to show basic roads or trails as well I suppose.
Basically I am looking for a leatherman, combined with a Garmin Etrex (or your favorite GPS). Now that would be useful...
And what are you going to tell the folks at the airport security checkpoint?
All I ask for in a knife is:
- A blade
- A large flathead screwdriver/bottle opener
- Small flathead screwdriver/can opener
- Philips head screwdriver
- 256M+ USB stick
- Built in Photon III, preferably in White
- Scissors
That's all I want. Is it really too much to ask for?I read the internet for the articles.
If you want Bush to win elections, set the os level global option in smb.conf to a higher number. It defaults to 20. Using 34 would make it win all elections every other candidate (except other Bushes).
An os level of two would make it beat Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, but not JF Kennedy. A JF Kennedy Domain Controller uses level 32. The maximum os level is 255.
If you want Bush to force an election on startup, set the preferred master global option in smb.conf to yes. Bush will then have a slight advantage over other potential presidential candidates that are not Preferred Presidential Candidates. Use this parameter with care, as if you have two candidates (whether they are Carter, Kennedy or Bush) in the same country, both set with preferred master to yes, then periodically and continually they will force an election in order to become the President Of The United States.
I just recently bought a Kingston 256MB USB key, and it came with this nice little lanyard... but how nerdy is that? Carrying around data like you might carry around a precious locket your grandmother gave you???
Ah yes, I can't wait until I'm old enough to have grandchildren I can pass my valuable data files to.
Maybe I'll just scan the locket...
Here in india , knives are not too popular due to a similar security reason.Anyone found with a blade(knife) which is more than 2 inches can be arrested.Not that anyone checks but you don't wanna be caught with one.What is the size of the main knife blade of the SAK anyway?
In USA are you allowed to keep the knife in your 'checked in' baggage?
Lord of the Binges.
Just like adding a nail file and a small retractable blade to an iPod (which would make juast as much sense - only more useful as it plays music and has bigger storage...)
:-(]
get your free iPod![This really works! - I have only 2 more referrals to go, my buddy already got his iPod (I should have gotten into this earlier
I use my iPaq PocketPC just for that. It is my gaming device (GameBoy, NES, SuperNES emulator), portable music player, ebook reader, portable storage solution and Addressbook/Calender. Oh, and I can surf the net from everywhere (via my cellphone) and send/recieve mails.
Most important: it is my universal interface.
USB, IRDA, serial, Bluetooth, CF-, SD- and PCMCIA-cards (via jacket) and it has speakers and microphone.
So, I'd say that a PocketPC is the Swiss Army Knife for the geek, but YMMV...
Keep open minded - but not that open your brain falls out...
Doesn't seems to work on the Slashdotted TheTechZone site, unforunately. :/
Here, try for yourselves:i d=79
http://www.thetechzone.com.nyud.net:8090/?m=show&
Be an elitist - read Slashdot at +4.
what about the ole trusty toothpick? we geeks are always on the go, and that would surely be helpful. :)
your sig links to a site similar to freeipods.com - where you sign 5 people up for 5 offers and get a free ipod (or flatscreen in your case). I have signed up (haven't referred anyone yet), but I have to wonder - are these legit? Scams? Has anyone actually received anything from them?
This is the second time this has been brought to my attention. The first was in March.
The only thing it doesn't do well is function as a card reader
Belkin makes a card reader that works with the dock-enabled iPods, but it costs around $100. Check the apple store if you're interested.
MacGyver has to make useful things out of stuff you would throw in the garbage - you can't just give him actual working stuff to use as it was intended to be used for...
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
I thought Slashdot was aimed at new and recent developments.
Seems that too much Slashdot is old news these days
EMail: 0110001101100010010000000110001101110010 0110000101111010011011100110000101110010 0010111001100011011011110110
ah so this is not a knife after all... it's just an USB drive with an MP3 player, gee that must be new
./R My blog
Just be careful not to cut yourself when playing your platformers on your phone.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
you don't need a cedilla on the 2nd "c" of the word "ceci".
And it only cost you 400 bucks!
Awesome!
A 120gig HDD and USB2.0 enclosure would run you about 80 if you shopped smart. And it won't overheat if you actually try to use it as a HDD for any extended period of time. I've seen them used as HDDs, they get real hot. And they don't charge over USB. And the batteries arent replacable.
Backups you always keep with you? Burn it on to a business card sized CD. Total cost? About a buck including a nice little hard-case that fits in your wallet.
Why do slashbots keep modding up people who tout the virtues of a $400 dollar iPod as a $90 external drive, when it's really a pretty miserable external storage solution.
I could tolerate the endless Mac advertarticles, and even quietly ignore people who claim Apple invented (well, anything really). But come on, this is supposed to be a geek tech site.
Yeah, you can use an iPod as an external HDD. But you shouldnt because it sucks at it. Actually pretty much any mp3 player can do the task. I can use my cell phone as a USB drive and mp3 player, but I dont go around recommending people piss away 600 bucks on the thing to back up their files.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I hope you cut the cacke BEFORE you tuned the carburetor... By the way, is their server also hostedon a swiss army knife?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
noone will ever be a professional chef in India.
Perhaps this is to discourage anyone from eating the delicious sacred cows?
http://www.livejournal.com/users/cixel
They looked pretty cool but i woudl rather jsut want the usefulness of somehting smaller with a light I decided. Sicne i already have a USB key ring stick. I personaly would like the one that comes with a the torx bits that come with it. Would make for always being able to take apart our HP 9000 servers.
How does the Swiss Army defend itselves against Nazis, Commies, and Al Queda with those itty-bitty knives? Do they know something we don't?
Best Buy can have you arrested
buy a new drive.
Ya know...you could use the screwdriver on your computer- opening or closing the case, adding or removing drives. You could use the knife to help pull out those hard to get ahold of jumpers. You could use the knife to cut CAT5. You can use the light to help see those tiny letters on your board.
You call the crummy red light a useful feature?
you know you're on the cuting edge of technology when Stuff and Maxim have both already covered your articles in print. come on, this is retarded. raise your hand if you didn't already hear about this. everyone else, reach over and smack those people.
I have a nice SAK that
Dude, I don't want to hear about your...err, nevermind.
Here's the March 11 article. I guess we can expect the next dupe some time in March 2005. Do people at /. read /. themselves?
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
sexing birds.
-
Yeah, but the Belkin reader is WAY too slow to be functional when you are trying to download 1 Gb microdrives.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
"the wheel".
Great -- so let's get this straight. I should carry around with me:
-- a 120Gb HD in a USB 2.0 enclosure, plus a mains cable, plus some shockproofing, plus a mains converter in case I need to use it in the car
-- a supply of CDs, which I must remember to burn every time any of my data changes, and which I have to stuff in my overstuffed wallet
-- my iPod, which I carry around with me anyway
thanks! you PC guys are great!
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
Overall the gadget is great, has been very useful. Oddly I think the ballpoint pen has gotten a fair amount of the use, but it's great having some portable storage. I was on vacation last week and it was perfect for use at Internet cafes.
I tried to get Firefox installed on it however it's not fully working yet, but I'm sure that's my fault.
"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey
And pray tell me, what use does a geek have for a knife? Geeks and Rambo have nothing in common.
Can we buy one without a tiny little blade that more than likely will get taken when we go through airport security?
i get enough suspicous looks from security stations for having a plain usb key. every time i go the stae capitol this is the conversation:
"what is this? a pocket knife?"
"no, it's a usb-key"
"a what?"
"it's for backing up computer files"
then they study it intensley for a minute trying to imagine a way that one could impale someone with 128mb of MSaccess files.
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!
So take care with the flash swiss army knives - I suspect there is a great marketplace run by airport security groups around the world.
I didn't expect this to literally be about a Swiss Army Knife. I thought it was going to be a USB device that had so many features it was comparable to a Swiss Army Knife. :D
What I really want is a USB pocket "drive" that uses removable media cards. That way i can use it with a variety of devices which may or may not have USB ports, but do have Media RAM slots.
Of course another neat little swiss trick is that they ain't got anything anyone else wants and what little there is is on top of mountains.
So nothing worthwhile and to hard to get at. Perfect defence.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
These thigns have already been reviewed all over the place. Not new. The USB memory part is made by SwissBit. Very good stuff.
Gorkman
I've now got two of these in my wallet. They are about the only USB drives thin enough to allow this.
t ick+usb&btnG=Search+Froogle
USB1 version has a write-protect switch and an activity light. USB2 version doesn't have a switch but fewer moving parts on something so tiny is probably a good thing. (I'm not affiliated with PQI. I just like their stuff.)
http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=intelligent+s
http://www.pqi1st.com/products/istick.asp
Does anyone know of cross platform security software for removable drives? PGP/GPG doesn't count!
--
"Extra Anus Kills Four-Legged Chick" -- Headline
a must have for dealing with those dogdy Dimensional Stabilizers
Or I'll slice you!
Learn About Outsourcing. http://www.pioutsource.com
I use a Swiss Army Officer's knife* as a key fob, I'm glad I have it at least a couple of times almost every day - most popular attachments are scissor, knife, corkscrew and tweezer in that order (reusable toothpick? Ick!). USB storage would probably be a tie with corkscrew.
*only officers get corkscrews, or so my Swiss friends tell me.
I'm lazy. And I carry too much crap as it is.
A 120gig HDD and USB 2.0 enclosure will generally need an external power supply. That's more bulk than an iPod.
I have a Mac. Lots of people do. Many Macs have slot-loading drives which will *die* when you try to use a business card CD.
I'll grant you that the iPod is not the best portable storage device, but it's a damned good music player that happens to pull double duty. Why bother carrying more crap than you need?
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
... not even to Canada. wtf?
Bud Light Presents
Real Men of Genius
Today, we salute you, Mr. Swiss Army Knife Inventor.
Thanks to you, we'll never be lost in a deep forest without our little plastic toothpick.
What's that bulge in my pocket? It's my knife, and my scissors, and my <insert everything here>, and my hasp, and my USB flash drive.
Who cares what a hasp is, what's a USB flash drive?
For those of us who enjoy wine, SAK without a corkscrew is useless. How can you go camping or have an informal picnic without a corkscrew? I carry my SAK all the time (except now on freaking airplane trips I have to put it in my baggage) and I never carry a "stand-alone" corkscrew.
Why miss out on all that lovely wine?
Instead of filing your nails, you could nail some files with this device.
you can backup your machine while you're disassembling it!
The1Genius - Littera Scripta Manet
Personally, I've never found red light or any other red colored things to be that useful since I have "red and green color inhibited vision," as my doctor put it. I call it "sorta color blind." Statistically, one in four men has some sort of color inhibited vision and so I wonder how it is that red light became so useful that it would be put on a swiss army knife.
I always thought the tweezers on my little Swissy were pretty pathetic, until I needed to extract an errant screw lodged in my motherboard. One of those things I don't use often, but does come in handy and it looks like it would have been easy to include.
While they're at it, they should throw in the plastic toothpick!
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Why bother? I can't take it on an airplane in my laptop bag. And even when I'm not flying I'd be scared that next time I do fly I'd forget to take it out before heading for the airport.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
If you already own an iPod, fine, go ahead and store shit on it.
But recommending you go and buy an iPod just to use as portable storage is moronic.
I don't want a music player. I don't listen to music. At all. The whole RIAA/iPod/Napster/indy/fair-use clusterfuck has completely killed the artform for me. Besides, even if I wanted to, my smartphone can already play MP3s (WMAs/OGGs/whatevers).
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Personally, I'll keep the Swiss Army Knife for physical tools, and use some form of PDA as a Digital Swiss Army Knife.
The Penguin Producer
Actually I have seen recently some external hard disks that run off of bus power. They ain't cheap but they are available and are usually a few bucks cheaper then a iPod and have more space. They also are nto much larger then a iPod. SmartDisk has a 80 GB Firewire drive that is bus powered. All you need is your firewire cable and that's it. I would not buy a iPod when all I need is a external hard disk. I DO want a iPod because I can do both, but more because it's a great MP3 player that also works with iTunes then because it's a hard drive. I'd still buy both if I was in need of storage because I don't want to waste my iPod's space with word documents....I would rather have only music on it.
Gorkman
I feel rather left behind. i'm waiting for the swiss-army-chainsaw WITH usb memory.
Only then I'll be happy!
I hope, some day, to attain your level of gripes. :)
Yeah, I've seen these before like everyone else. I was hoping to see a big hunting knife so frighten people every time I saved a paper at the school computer lab.
Stop invalid scientific research. Ask your local scientists to feed their lab rats with a phytoestrogen-free chow.
I had to make an emergency flight down to Southern California for a client and the TSA on the return flight home confiscated my RJ45/RJ11 CABLE CRIMPER that I had at the bottom of my bag. Now, any geek who's ever operated one of these devices will know the blade on it is so small and unexposed...but he didn't know what it was, and wouldn't allow me to take it back.
I spent the whole flight back how it would be possible for a deranged hijacker to take over a plane by cutting lots of patch cables.
Excuse me. I'll pass. I'd rather have a real knife than one of those weenie tech toys. An SAK can be expected to be useful for, easily, a human lifetime. This thing will be obsolete in 5 years.
What is more effective then, /. the living daylights out of the competitor, have tons of links to their partner. What kind of advertising is that?
It was a brilliantly clever plot, but now that we've exposed it *knock*, *knock*, uhm, brb, oh, hi Cmdr *whack* NO CARRIER....
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
This was on /. six months ago.
Dude, tis product is so old the mastadons were using them before the last ice-age. How does such an old and lame story make it to /.; Oh, there is a relationship between /. and ThinkGeek.... Looks like a commerce thing and not a real story of interest... Someone is slacking over at /.
Jamey Kirby
Why are they called that? Do the Swiss even have an army? I thought they were supposed to be neutral and stuff...
Wouild still work after being splashed with water, blood and fishguts? that's what happens to Swiss army all the time. Mark
Keep the faith, you'll get there.
Seriously, I shoot panoramas with a Canon 1Ds. I can fill up 3 1 Gig cards in an hour with ease. I only HAVE 3 1 gig cards. I had a digital wallet which would download in the camera bag, but it was a POS and the battery would die after three cards... and the LCD was unreadable. I'm desperate for a solution and a decent card reader for the iPod would be the business.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
Bart: "Seems like everywhere I go people are having fun with knives."
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"