4gb mini flash drives for $19.95

[Fash]

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=206231897

Kingston 4GB DataTraveler Mini-Migo Edition USB 2.0 Flash Drive
SAVE $18.04
FREE BUDGET SHIPPING
Buy.com price: $19.95
List price: $37.99

Just picked up 2 myself..

[Aslanna]

It's tiny!

[Canelek]

That is a good price. I just spent around $25 for the SANDisk 4GB Cruzer Titanium. It is pretty fucking solid though! I like the retractable USB plug.

[noel]

I use the Cruzer Micro 4GB for pretty much everything. Love it. Once we get up to about 10GB, we'll be good to go for DVD movie xfers.

[Boogahz]

I use the Cruzer Micro 4GB for pretty much everything. Love it. Once we get up to about 10GB, we'll be good to go for DVD movie xfers.

I have the same stick. It is working great for me, and I love not having to keep up with a cap for it

[Noysyrump]

I bought a 2gb sony from frys for about $45. The very next week they put the 4gb on sale for $35. boy was I mad. Well now I have 6gbs that arent even close to full, so in short. I dont need this.

[Winnow]

I keep an eye on the prices of these things but never seem to need them.

I did buy a 16GB SDHC card for my camera and that was 74.00 a month or so ago. There are devices you can buy that will convert SD cards and other non USB format cards for use as USB drives so maybe one day I'll use it for that.

My next phone/media player has to have an SD or mini SD expansion slot. I'd like to be able to store everything (movies/mp3s) on one little 32GB card and use it in all of my portable media devices.

I'm not big on mass libraries of MP3s but my podcast activity each week takes up about 8GB of my 16GB iTouch memory. I figure 32GB will be a very nice size for cramming all sorts of crap on a single card (DVD images for transport, movies, mp3s, video/audio podcasts), etc.

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

I just picked up an 8GB thumb drive for $39. They have super cheapies at Microcenter for $29.

[Fash]

new sale at tigerdirect:

PNY Attache 4gb flash drives, $14.99

[Ashur]

Good price until you add on the seven and a half bucks for shipping, which then only makes it comparable for similar sales at retail outlets. Would be a no-brainer to combine with a larger order.

I would probably buy one anyway, but I want to inspect them to make sure it has a keyring holder that is durable as I've had two break and once they separate from my keys, it's no longer handy as I forget it.

There's a corsair one that looks like it's encased in rubber and looks like it would stay on my keyring, which may be a better buy for me.

Anyway, thanks Fash!

[Canelek]

That is a good price. I just spent around $25 for the SANDisk 4GB Cruzer Titanium. It is pretty fucking solid though! I like the retractable USB plug.

Has little loop for keyring as well....

[Ashur]

How durable is the loop? Most have them, but a millimeter of brittle plastic seems to be the standard and that breaks WAY to easily. I need one with like an eighth of an inch of durable metal or hardened rubber.

[Truant]

http://www.2giftshop.com/popup_image.ph ... a90c228857

That's what all the PNY sticks with key loops look like. They're just different colors. It's plastic, but it seems pretty durable. I don't know how hard you are on your keys.

[Canelek]

I don't have in front of me, so will need to get back to you. I think it is just a small ring attached to a metal part of the casing. Only plastic on the unit is the thumbswitch to retract usb plug.

[Canelek]

Yup. The splitring is attached to the inner-casing, which is all metal as well. I wouldn't run over it with a tractor, but it is pretty fucking solid!

[Winnow]

I like reading all of these "new discovery" storage tech stories:

A breakthrough in technology could see the memory capacity of devices such as the iPod increase by 150,000 times, Glasgow University researchers claimed.

Two experts said they had developed a molecule-sized switch which means that data storage could be boosted without having to increase the size of devices.

The biggest iPod MP3 player currently available can hold about 40,000 songs.

However, new nanotechnology could theoretically allow users to store millions of video and music tracks.

Professor Lee Cronin and Dr Malcolm Kadodwala, from the university's chemistry department, said their work could see 500,000 gigabytes squeezed into a microchip no bigger than a two pence piece.

[Ashur]

My wife got a free 2GB flash yesterday at Micro Center. I went and got a free 1GB one. Nice and sturdy keyloop in the mold on it.

4GB Cheap = Good but 1GB Free = Great

[cadalano]

I don't have in front of me, so will need to get back to you. I think it is just a small ring attached to a metal part of the casing. Only plastic on the unit is the thumbswitch to retract usb plug.

instead of retractable plugs, they should have short little coiled up extension cords 1-2 inches long that wind up like a tape measure. I know I would pay a lot for something like that, and that means everyone else would too. who wants to go into business with me to produce such a device? your responsibilities will be to bankroll the entire project and to make countless millions of dollars

[Winnow]

I bought one of these for $29.00 off Newegg today. I've been playing around with portable apps, notably, the group of apps from Portable Apps.com:

http://portableapps.com/

I've never had a use for a USB drive but was very impressed with the set of portable apps available and figured it couldn't hurt to have a medium sized drive around. This one isn't the fastest but it's tiny and cheap. I considered the 32GB USB drives but since I don't really have much use for anything like this yet, I went the cheapo route.

I used my Fatty Nano as a thumb drive to test things out since I don't use it otherwise so it's a $199.00 8GB thumb drive for the most part. Beyond the nice set of apps linked above, I grabbed the portable version of FastStone Image Viewer (best one out there) and a great, simple, gapless, directory playing MP3/Music player.

The 32GB drives, after 20.00 mail in rebate, are down to $129.00 already. 16GB ~$54.00

I plan on creating a 4GB TrueCrypt folder or possibly just encrypting the whole thing.

[Fash]

Cool. Thought I'd mention that the originally linked flash drives are ReadyBoost capable.

[Winnow]

Got my little mini 8GB USB drive today from Newegg. First, I got it a day early so Newegg continues to rock.


I copied my Portable Apps folders over to it and it took a hell of a long time to copy ~350mb. Turns out that it just doesn't like lots of super small files. I copied a directory of images, an episode of BSG, a 700MB divx movie and an MP3 album. All of those transferred quickly so the only thing that's an issue is multiple small (kb) sized files.

I know thumb drives aren't that exciting but I did take the drive, with the files above, and stuck it in one of the four PS3 USB slots (the original 60GB PS3 also has the multicard reader that the later versions lack)

Divx/AVI playback on the PS3 works great. I'm happy with it. I'm looking forward to watching TV shows and movies grabbed off he newsgroups on my home theater without having to network or have my computer on.

The image viewer is surprisingly good and fast. In fact, everything is fast. I guess the Cell Processor does have it's uses. With how good the images look, I can't wait to start reading comics on the 42" LCD in 1920x1080 mode. My projector is only 720p and it looks good. PS3 can't read CBR files so I'll have to go PC mode for that. BTW, the PS3 has this filmstrip mode that's super cool. With the cell processor power behind it, there 3D effects of photos (from the directory you're viewing) dropping onto the strip from off the screen, and making the images look like real photos with curved up edges, etc, is really neato in a geeky kind of way. They kinda drop down from above, and land randomly on the moving strip.

On impressive thing is the multitasking/layers. You can play movies in the background while screwing around with the Home menus on the PS3. I'm playing music in the background while viewing images (I know this stuff is available on the 360 as well). There's normal, slide, portait, photo album and photo album 2 modes for slide shows. In photo album one and two, the images adjust to the amount of zoom you have using the right stick control in a 3D way. Nice. It's a nice change from a standard slide show mode. You can manually fly through the images or thumbs on the main home menu as well.

The PS3 offers a nice view for info on movies/videos (time, etc, all on the main home menu so you don't have to dig deep to get info)

I'm so used to seeing crappy images on TVs from PCs.

So, in summary. (don't let the PS3 fanbois know) the PS3 looks to be an outstanding media center and is now something that I can actually use so the console doesn't rot in my closet. The impression I'm left with is zero hassle, speedy image, music, movie viewing on the PS3. Now I need to look into networking it with the PC although the USB thumb solution is good. I'm hooked up to my ethernet but the PS3 doesn't see folders on my PC yet.

Grades:

8GB Mini X-Patriot: B+

-hella tiny (is as small as those little Sony micro vault USB drive)
-speedy except for tons of small files when xferring (I think that's normal for all USB drives)
-rubbery cover and cap are nice. Can get good grip on it and the cap "squishes" on (its soft rubber) which I think is better than a hard click in place cap.

PS3 Multimedia: B+

-Cell Processor makes everything super smooth and speedy
-nice set of features/controls for movies, images and music although still basic
-easy to control using standard PS3 controller
-it's quite easy to copy stuff from your USB storage device to the PS3's hard drive
-it's also easy to copy images, movies and music from your PS3 to USB storage device

I'm kind of wishing I could find a TV that would play AVi/Divx directly off USB now.

I am awarding the PS3 a spot on my Home Theater rack for its multimedia capabilities. It's quite an honor. I hope it's proud.

[Ashur]

The hard plastic keyhole loop on my 1GB drive broke. Sigh...

[Winnow]

PS3 talk on the "low down"

I played around with media sharing last night. A DLNA Media Server is what's required to share media between Windows and PS3. Window Media Player 11 does this.

Unlike SMB servers, it appears you have to have a library scan your media before it's viewable when using DLNA. This blows. First, I want nothing to do with Windows Media Player. There are alternative DNLA media servers. I tried one but you still have to prescan stuff.

I'm looking for a way to designate specific folders which could be read on the fly for media.

PS3 as a media center takes a step back in the meantime. Prescanning your library is lame. I've never maintained a library. I just download something and watch it. Not too hard to make up a fiolder structure that's easy to organize: Media/Videos/TVSeries/BSG

Lame if DNLA can't do this.