3DVelocity would like to thank Trek 2000 International Ltd, and in particular Chris Street , for their invaluable help and generosity in supplying this product for review.

 

Performance and Price :

If I've got to be honest, I think the ThumbDrive is at least 30% too expensive, but it's also a relatively new technology and I'm sure prices will fall in time. Here are the prices in £ (GBP) for the various capacities as listed at DataMind UK Prices include VAT:

Standard Drive (Not Secure) 8Mb . . . . £44.99 16Mb . . . £59.00 32Mb . . . £89.00 64Mb . . . £149.00 128Mb . . £279.00 256Mb . . £459.00 512Mb . . £659.300

Secure Drive 8Mb . . . . £54.99 16Mb . . . £69.99 32Mb . . . £99.00 64Mb . . . £159.00

As you can see, there's a huge disparity in the price per Mb from the 8Mb to the 512Mb offering. This of course is the case for all storage media, but the jump from £5.62/Mb for an 8Mb Unit to £1.28/Mb for the 512Mb unit does seem a little harsh.

Performance proved to be solid and reliable throughout, though at no point did I come close to the claimed read/write speeds of 700/350Kbytes/Second. This may be a system configuration issue, though I am able to download much higher capacities at faster speeds from my digital camers via the USB port, suggesting something is amiss somewhere. Anyway, for the record, here are the data transfer rates I achieved writing to the Thumbdrive from my hard disk.

 

From left to right:

7.5 Mb of MP3's comprising 2 separate files . . . . 57 seconds

7.5Mb of Mpeg Video comprising 8 separate Files . . . . 74 seconds

7.5Mb uncompressed tiff image single file . . . . 55 seconds

7.5Mb of Jpegs comprising 172 separate files . . . . 135 seconds

It should be obvious from those results that the Thumbdrive is far quicker when dealing with single large files than it is with multiple small files (as is always the case with storage devices), though I really doubt most people are going to quibble over a minute or two here and there when the convenience far outweighs factors such as those. I often think that timings for devices like this are a pointless exercise as thay can vary so much from system to system and from file type to file type. The fact that all the files in question executed flawlessly straight from the drive leads to the conclusion that it's "quick enough".

Conclusion :

If the price doesn't phase you, then nothing I'm about to write here will disuade you from wanting one of these mini marvels. For sheer convenience, the ThumbDrive is peerless, offering sustained high data transfer rates and ultra reliable solid state technology in one tiny floppy disk busting package. In putting it through its paces, I found a multitude of uses for it, including transferring a vital file from my main PC to my semi-crippled test system. In fact the biggest drawback to date is that I have to send it back.

If you need to shift large ammounts of data without having to slice and dice them onto dozens of floppy disks.If you need your data with you at all times. If you want to impress the boss with that Powerpoint presentation you sat up all night creating, or if you just want to swap music, images, sounds, screensavers, notes, maps, flash animations, photos, or indeed anything alse I haven't mentioned, then I can only recommend what must the most imaginative and innovative product we've seen for some considerable time. I'd llove to see that protective cap with a pocket clip, and I'd love to see the prices fall a little, but other than that it's hard to knock something so small that does so much so well.

Installation was as easy as crashing Windows, the drivers were right on the money and the supplied documentation was clear and simple. What more could you ask for?