Jon Peddie Research - a technically oriented marketing, research, and management consulting firm in the graphics industry.

How low can you go?

Posted by Jon Peddie on September 22nd 2009 | Comments Closed
Categories: Hardware Review
Tags: mobile vista disk storage ibm verbatim drive flashdrive kodak

2.13 billion bits per buck, that’s how low. For one U.S. penny you get 21 million bits of memory in a package not much bigger than a U.S. penny. Verbatim has introduced an 8GB USB memory for $30.

Verbatim, one of the pioneer companies of the industry, having started in 1969 with a license from IBM to build floppy discs, has gone through the usual ups and downs, management changes, and refinancing gyrations any 50-year-old company in the computer business would have to endure. In 1985, it was bought by Eastman Kodak, and in 1990 it was sold to Mitsubishi Kasei Corporation, a giant Japanese chemical conglomerate that also manufactured optical disks and other information products. And through all that, it has managed to maintain its corporate headquarters at its Charlotte, North Carolina, facility.

Verbatim has been a leader in introducing new memory technologies, and has taken a commanding position on the USB memory sticks, which for reasons that escape me are called “drives.” Maybe Sony owns the term memory stick and so Verbatim, Samsung and SanDisk had to find a generic non-owned word.

When the company sent us a couple of their new parts to play with we were delighted. Vista will accept up to 4GB for speeding it up (and Vista needs all the help it can get, believe me.) So it was with great enthusiasm we plugged in the new device. The initial results were less than satisfying.

However, after adjusting for cockpit error and some of the idiosyncrasies of Vista the 8GB was recognized and I was informed it allow up to 4096 MB (half of the USB drive) to be allocated to speeding up Vista—thank you.

These little jewels can run between 3.75 5o 6.5 MB/s which is amazingly fast and getting all USB 2.0 has to offer. As you can see from the photo, the device tucks snugly into the USB port. I tethered it to my power supply so I wouldn’t lose it (having already lost one and rush out to BestBuy to get a replacement.

Verbatim has a larger, more rugged unit called the Tuff-Clip.

The Tuff-Clip has two features I like: A sliding cover to protect the USB connector (I always lose those stupid caps you get with most USB drives) and a hinged ring clip so you can easily snap it onto something bigger to prevent loss.

Verbatim is going to get even larger With Freecom added to the MKM/Verbatim group. Mitsubishi Kagaku Media Co., (MKM) just announced the acquisition of Freecom B.V., a privately held data storage company established in Germany with headquarters in Rijswijk, Netherlands. The stock-funded acquisition includes all of Freecom’s physical assets, patents, trademarks, technology, engineering, sales and marketing expertise. The purchase price was not
disclosed.

Freecom, was founded in 1989, and designs, manufacturers, and markets desktop and mobile storage solutions, network attached storage devices, media players, internet radios, flash drives, DVD burners and professional tape drives for PCs and Macs.

What do we think?

Thirty bucks for 8GB? Is that even a question? Why wouldn’t you buy that? Because you’re going to wait till the price comes down to $25?

Go get one, it’s probably the biggest bargain you’ll find today. You can store a zillion pictures on it. With the 4GB left over after speeding up Vista I could put my entire 1,921 pictures on it (see CyberLink story) and have 800MB left over.