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Written by Mikhail Ivanenkov
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Saturday, 16 June 2007 |
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Page 1 of 3
Thanks to Card Cooler for the product sample.
Probably one of (if not the) most successful 'puter geek must-haves is the USB mini drive. These RAM chips with a USB port are becoming more and more popular, and with good reason. Mass removable storage is now possible thanks to the dirt cheap prices of high speed CD-RW drives and accompanying media. Unfortunately, technologies like Mount Rainier are only now beginning to appear, and it'll be a while before CDs can be used effectively as on-the-go storage.
Sure, everyone burns disks and with after-rebate deals on free CD-R spindles, there's no reason not to. But not nearly as many use CD-RWs in the same way, especially since high-speed media (24x) is very scarce and so are the drives. Floppy disks are all but gone, and keychain disk drives, in my opinion, are the replacement, not CDs. Just think of it as a miniature Zip disk. Just as durable, faster (in most cases), and a lot more compatible, since all you need is a USB port and a brain.
I can't say I remember who started it all, but nowadays there are literally dozens of variations, from capacity to external appearance to features such as write-protection, password security and the like. Some offer bare drives while others give you the whole shebang, not just the mini disk itself. The drive I got today is a 64mb version, and of course there's more to it than just the keychain. The packaging is actually a bit tacky, complete early 90's look. It just seems like this particular drive has been around for a while; perhaps it's one of the first models produced (of the operating systems mentioned on the back of the package, WinXP isn't one of them). At any rate, everything arrived unharmed so I have no major complaints; I just don't think I'll keep the box because of its "dazzling looks".
The inside carton looks like one of those older egg holders or a McDonald's cup tray, again reiterating the whole prototype look. But anyway, the package has pretty much everything you could want, save for a copy of the latest FPS game. So what's included? Well, aside from the drive (take a wild guess where it is), you get a male/female USB cable (so if you're using it with a desktop you don't have to reach way back there every time), a driver floppy for Win98 (I guess you do need to load drivers but I'm not sure, I haven't had to anyway), a leather-ish pouch for the geek-elite and a necklace thingy below that which I'll show in a bit.
As I mentioned earlier, the included male/female USB cable is simply an extension so that it's easier to use the drive with a desktop whose ports may be located in the rear. Obviously, this cable can be used as an extension for anything else as well. On a side note, we've yet to see many USB2.0 flash disks (though there are a few recently introduced), but when that day comes pen drives will most likely replace the remainder of all floppies, save for the seldom used startup disk. I couldn't locate the manufacturer of the drive, but that's somewhat irrelevant. At any rate, here are the specs from the back of the box:
- USB interface plug and play
- Transfer rate: 12m bits/sec
- Power supply: DC 5V (from USB port)
- Volume: 78 X 25 X 13 mm
- Write protection function
- Memory: 32M/64M/128M/256M/512M/1G
- System requirements:
Win 98, Win ME, Win 2000, MAC O/S
- Mainboard support USB port
Win 98, MAC OS 8.6 or below shall install driver first; Win 2000, Win ME, MAC OS 9.0 or above don't need
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 16 June 2007 )
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