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USB Flash Drive Round-up
Adam writes "Ars has published a massive USB 2.0 Hi-speed Flash drive roundup, with 10 USB
2.0 flash drives that they've tested on three OSes. They rate the drives by performance, durability, and features/accessories (including the crappy software that no one uses).
Definitely a good read for anyone who has recently sat on their USB thumbdrive!"
Still, the most important feature is that it's bootable. (And some still aren't) I love having Feather Linux on a keychain. The Cruzer Mini has done me well.
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
From TFA:
Previously, most people had no idea what a Flash drive was, but now you can be sure to find most people with even a basic Flash drive in their pocket or purse.
Uh, no. Whoever wrote this must make a living pickpocketing or mugging geeks only.
i bought one, and I'm not really happy with it : if you attach the drive at your keychain, you can NOT insert the drive in a USB port without the keys : the litlle cord is FIXED on the drive ! This is very annoying, since I have quite a bunch of keys (10+.. hey, there's a poll suggestion) and the whole mess tends to get tangled between the KVM cables.
if you buy a drive : make sure you can unplug it from whatever it is attached to. But make sure that the drive itself doesn't unplug too easily : I lost my previous drive cause the click-'n-hold system wore off and it would unplug at the slightest pull
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
What a lame comment.
'10 days ago' isn't very old. The news is still relevent and interesting.
The job of the editors isn't to repost news articles as soon as they happen like some RSS newsfeed.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
I opened that page up accidentally in Safari instead of Firefox, and man, now I remember why I installed Flashblock. Ow. Ow. OW OW OW. 3/4 of the page is flash advertisements!
Please help metamoderate.
They excluded all mp3 players from the review.
If they added mp3 players, the review would have grown from 12 devices to 30.
However, if I had a choice between a 512MB Flash Drive for $60, and a 512MB Flash Drive/mp3 player for $99, I would definately consider the latter.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Any idea why the OSX test yielded results 5MB/s slower than Windows?
dom
The PQI stick is absolutely amazing. I have one and leave it in the cargo pocket of whatever pants I'm wearing and hardly remember it's there until it's needed. My roomate also has one (he actually got me mine for this past Christmas) and he has put his through the wash twice already and it still works perfectly.
One thing that's weird in the review is they act so shocked that the I-Stick can be so small and still be so good... but have they ever opened up any other USB thumb drive? Most have what looks like a I-Stick inside them. The case broke off my cruzer titanium (yeah, its titanium, but the part that holds the two halfs together definitely was not!) and I used to carry around the inside piece after that which was about the size of the I-Stick, but of course was not as strong of plastic and couldn't survive like the I-stick has.
Just my $0.02
It might take 10 days to make its first appearance on slash, but you can be sure it will be back tomorrow.
liqbase
Once there was an interface standard that supported the basic "something that looks like a disk drive" concept, the war was essentially over. Who cares if different people choose flash, or miniature disk, or anything else that might come along? So long as they can all plug into that USB port and behave pretty much the same to your host computer's software, there's no reason to mind that a single removable media format is not king.
What's left for the USB media revolution is its use in bricks and mortar commerce. In the B&M scene, they are constantly trying to create schemes to get you to carry a device (e.g., smartcards) to let them "touch" your data. The information benefits for the B&M store are clear, and the example of store cards ("10% off if you have your QFC card!") shows that they can offer rewards to induce the information sharing.
But who wants to carry 15 different magstripe cards for 15 different stores? The answer is in those little USB devices that more and more people have in their pocket. What's needed is an open standard for sharing data on a USB device -- a standard that lets the customer control what the merchant can store on the card, and what information the customer is willing to share with that merchant.
Consider the following scenario. I walk into a store I've never visited before. They tell me that if I sign up for an "affinity card", I'll get 30% off today's purchase. But now, instead of spending 15 minutes filling out a lengthy form of personal information, I just plug in my disk on key. Up comes a list of personal profiles I've created. I pick the one I'm willing to share with the store, select how much device storage I'm willing to let the store have on my USB device, punch a button, and I'm done!. When I return that store, I can just plug my pocket USB device into their socket to qualify for discounts.
You can already purchase password database applications designed to run from USB disks. These let you walk up to your Internet cafe machine, plug in your USB disk, and gain access to all your many encrypted passwords for logging into various web sites. There's no reason the same sort of thing can't be extended to "logging in" to B&M stores.
1GB iPod Shuffle: $149
The prices of the reviewed drives (according to the comparison matrix at the end of the article) are $77, $120, $116, $138, $86, $127, $108, $80, and $80 for each of the 1GB models. Not only is EVERY drive reviewed cheaper than a 1GB iPod Shuffle, but 4 of the 1GB drives are cheaper than the 512MB iPod Shuffle. Don't get me wrong, I love my iPod Shuffle, but it is NOT cheaper than these drives.