Kingston Unveils 64 GB USB Sticks
Remember those days of 64 megabyte USB flash drives ? Those days are long gone as evidenced by Kingston’s latest DataTraveler drives that can store up to 64 GB of data for under $200.
The drives also come with a five year warranty and 24/7 tech support. USB flash drives aren’t terribly complicated devices and we’re not sure why anyone would really use the tech support.
While the capacity of the drives is certainly nice, the removable end cap will mostly lose itself after just one week of use. Also don’t expect high transfer rates as Kingston is not recommending the drive for Windows Vista ReadyBoost.
USB flash drive makers are in an arms race of sorts to build unique devices. While most companies seem content on raising capacities to sky high levels, some are also offering extras like backup software and 256-bit AES encryption.
Kingston isn’t the only company with 64 GB USB flash drives and it joins companies like Corsair, Patriot and Super Talent. Those companies have released similar sized devices in recent months.
The 64 GB DataTraveler DT150 retails for $177 while a smaller 32 GB version will sell for $116. Interestingly enough, the drives are available on NewEgg at a significant discount - $130 and $70 for the 64 and 32 GB models respectively.
Also can some one fix the glitch in this comment thing? I can't read/see what I am typing.
USB 3 is going to be another nice marketing tool. It will do nothing for many devices, and yet a great majority will pay a premium for the higher number.
though, this is also of great use for people using nettops where downloaded files transferred to the usb device.
i wish they had gone with the USB 3.0 spec though, even though it would never attain the top speed. just for future proofing, though.
Also just because it holds a lot doesn't mean everyone is going to be transfering EVERYTHING off at once. I myself use flash drives to hold PC images and use it as a boot device to stage PCs.
Curent flash memory has a read speed of about 320Mbit/s (40MB/s) and a write speed of about 160Mbit/s (20MB/s). Until the actual speed of the flash memory increases, the higher bandwidth of USB 3.0 will be wasted.
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20080201corp.htm
When ^^ is the standard for flash it will ke advanage of 3.0.