SUMMARY: It's time again for another Gizmos, Gadgets and Goodies Guide. Instead of bringing you a monthly guide which manages to continually put us in a bind, we've decided to post regular guides which aren't governed as being posted monthly. In our latest GGG guide, Shawn "Toxic" Baker takes a look at new products from Sunbeam, Crucial, Kingmax and Antec. Looking for products to spend your extra cash on? Read on then!
While Crucial made a big mark in Part 1 of our recently published Dual Channel DDR Roundup, recently they have also expanded into the Flash Drive market like a lot of other memory manufacturers who recognize the rapidly growing popularity of these tiny devices. Crucial are very well known for making high quality memory modules and we will see if this quality carries over to the new Flash Drive which they provided us with.
- USB 2.0 Flash Drive
At first glance the drive looks absolutely stunning from the classy white finish, size in megabytes printed on the front and the actual dimension of the drive which makes it stand out from the others that we have looked at which is much more thinner and compact than others we have received from various companies. Unlike the Mushkin flash drive which we looked at last month, this drive simply carries data to and from computers instead of additionally having functionality as a portable MP3 player. The drive comes in the same brown box as Crucial RAM and while it is not the most exciting package of all time, it does keep the device safe when traveling long distances.
Using the drive is very easy and simply involves plugging it into one of your available USB 1.1 or 2.0 ports. If you are using an operating system after Windows 98/SE, the flash drive simply detects under Windows and proceeds to install itself as a removable drive under My Computer. In the case that you are using Windows 98/SE you will need to install drivers to get it working as this OS does not include native support like Windows XP and onward. The drive was used with Windows XP and detected straight away as a Crucial flash drive and proceeded to install itself without any problems in just a matter of seconds.
Copying to and from the drive is done with great ease thanks to the joy of USB. Though this particular drive is only 128MB, larger flash drives are available which will be quite handy if you do need to copy large files or even boot directly off since these devices are totally bootable – the possibilities are endless.
While the Crucial flash drives is one of the more expensive types we have seen, it is definitely one of the best units to look at and use. The only real down fall with it is that the cord that can be attached to you when carrying it around is quite small and could’ve been longer so people can hang it around their neck. The cap could be lost quite easily as well since it is a separate part of the device and not attached. If you are after a flash drive that not only looks good and supports the newer, speedier USB 2.0 interface, Crucial flash drives might be just what the doctor order, just with a higher price tag than others on the market.
