16GB Flash USB Dongle 305
Derek Dongle writes "This is great — Toshiba plans to bring out a limited edition 16GB USB dongle. What would you do with 16GB in your pocket? Who knows? As the writer of this story says, "It may be one of the occasional cases of: who cares? It's a 16GB USB drive that fits in your pocket and weighs 12 grams!" I'm not quite sure I want to call it a dongle. At 8x2 cm it's not the smallest thing to attach to a keychain. But at 16 GB you could keep a good bit of your life there, provided you aren't working in audio or video. I keep a 1GB stick on my keychain, which is enough for almost anything.
But... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You is not funny.
Yeah but... (Score:5, Interesting)
16GB on a USB dongle/keychain is great! Finally, I can slap a few different movie choices, compressed, and a mess load of mp3s when I head over to visit friends for an evening or family for an afternoon, all without needing a notebook or similar device to hold it. It'd be great to show up for a night of fun and be able to have 10 different comedies movies on your keychain, so your buddies can have a little selection. How about showing up to your sisters house with a dozen Disney/Pixar flicks for the kids to watch... all without scratching a DVD? And, yes, it further pushes into the peripheral (no pun) territory of the iPod's benefits as multipurpose portable storage.
I hope more people release similar sized usb dongles. And large ones. It all helps drive down the price.
Re:Yeah but... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yeah but... (Score:4, Insightful)
No more than do external hard drives, or any other portable media.
The potential of bad uses shouldn't preclude any good uses.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yeah but... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like giving BB guns to kids.. you know they're gonna get themselves in trouble.
Re:Yeah but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
like with every gadget, it's great for some people and just not enough for other people. Like when the 40GB iPods came out, people were bitching that it wasn't 100GB and half the size.
now, I think the best use for this device for be for the handheld console hacker community. It'd be pretty sweet to access this via your PSP or DS and get access to some serious content (movies, games, ROMs, etc). 16GB in such a small space (especi
Re: (Score:2)
Talk about something you'd really hate to loose.
Re:But... (Score:5, Insightful)
Memory Size 64GB
Write Speed 1 MB/s
If these things are gonna be larger and larger, they're really gonna have to work on the speed. The stick you point out would need to be partitioned and used in an LVM-like fashion (add partitions as you need space), simply because formatting it would take almost 18 hours.
Granted -- after initial formatting, you wouldn't need to write 64GB all at once to the stick, but even for "smaller" items (DVD-quality movies, large quantities of music, etc), you're still talking a little over an hour.
Capacity is wonderful -- if it's actually practical to use.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But... (Score:5, Funny)
How about some more *durable* flash drives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's face it, most "keychain" drives are flimsy affairs made of plastic, with tops that pop off easily--hardly the kind of thing you want to carry around every day in your pocket (especially if you're active). I wouldn't every want to drop these things, much less think of them going through the wash or getting banged around by my keys.
How about we see some more durable drives in larger sizes? Hell, I'd be willing to pay a premium for something I could rely on to take a beating.
-Eric
Re:How about some more *durable* flash drives? (Score:5, Insightful)
My 256MB Lexar thumb drive has worked great for the past year of heavy usgae, but my 2 Memorex 1GB both failed after 4 months of usage. I'm currently using a 4GB PNY Attache thumb drive. I will agree it's flimsy and I don't have much hope of it lasting either. Hell I have a 16MB Dell thumb drive that is still working great even after 3 years of heavy use! Yet the larger ones always seem to have a pretty unacceptable failure rate.
I really can't see needing 16GB's of storage in my pocket when I'm having trouble finding usgae for the 4GB's I currently have. I'd like to see how reliable this 16GB drive is as well before I even think about it. It seems to me the larger the flash drive, the less reliable it is long term. I'm not sure why though, and YMMV.
Lexar (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As the price of flash goes down and competition increases the margins on selling these things get razor thin and suddenly everyone's out to reduce their cost by making cheaper, inferior housing for them and probably making sacrifices on the actual flash itself.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How about some more *durable* flash drives? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, In the back of most free city papers, you can find all sorts of ads for businesses which provide the services described...
Do you even own one? (Score:5, Informative)
I have has my 512 MB thumb drive go through the wash no less than 3 times. I have had it dropped, stepped on countless times. Never once have I lost data and it still wokrs fine to this day.
Flash drives **are durable**, much more so than any DVDR or CDR are. Lexar even makes a hardened case version that can be run over with a car.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I would expect it to be a lot more durable than a DVD or CD - these things cost a lot more! A DVD blank is under $1. There are 16GB thumb drives but they cost $750. I think the 4GB drives are around $100, which is about 100x the cost per GB. I expect the more expensive device to be a lot more durable.
The usage is a lot different too, not too many people tried carrying optical discs in their pockets, but t
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How about some more *durable* flash drives? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How about some more *durable* flash drives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, I think the guys who design these things should have to actually try USING them in the real world sometime. I've seen some designs that defy the limits of sheer design stupidity.
-Eric
Obligatory Response Required (Score:5, Funny)
That's what she said!!!
Re: (Score:2)
I have a SanDisk 512MB stick that has been washed and dried no less than 3 times and it still works perfectly. I'm impressed actually.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They've been pretty good and durable so far (about a month) and were on the cheap (under $20 a piece) but they
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've stepped on it, washed it, and it lives on my keychain, so it's always been beat up all to heck, but it still works fine.
Plus, it's kind of cute.
Re: (Score:2)
Avoid these things like the plague.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
something elmer fudd uses to get to the moon?
Losing your keys... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pardon me (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Pardon me (Score:4, Funny)
Then again, I can just imagine it now ... My dongle's bigger than your dongle!! :)
Re:Pardon me (Score:5, Funny)
No offense to anyone with a true microdongle, of course.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
A: Because men keep telling them that this <----------------------> is 8 inches!
Re:Pardon me (Score:5, Funny)
> A: Because men keep telling them that this <----------------------> is 8 inches!
I don't get the joke. I read /. on a 200" room projector, you insensitive clod!
(...because I tried watching pr0n on it once, and I'm still having nightmares about shoggoths!)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Unless it is affordable... (Score:2)
Re:Unless it is affordable... (Score:5, Informative)
Not sure why it is "limited edition", since surely we are just going to see bigger and bigger USB drives, as we have in the past.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree why would I want to buy something that only stores 16 gigs for over a $150? Besides what would I store on it, Music? No, I can store more than 16 gigs on my MP3 player. If I need a big portable storage for data I will spend the money on an external USB drive. The 16 gigs is to much for a
A Full System Install (Score:2, Interesting)
Just make sure you know it's there... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Right now we are using BartPE (XPE) to boot XPSP2 and run Ghost, I'm looking at putting Bart on the USB drive too, if possible.
Too long (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably sit on it and break it. 8 cm long? Not short enough to prevent bending it should I sit on something that could act as a lever... like the edge of a subway seat.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Let's repost my reply:
I just pulled out my USB flash drive and my ruler. My current, standard-sized flash drive is 7cm X 2cm X 1cm. One extra cm, 14% longer, doesn't seem that big. Or did I miss something?
You notice one little question at the end there? The one that said "Or did I miss something?" If you had one single ounce of social ability, you could say, "You missed the fact that not everyone has that size USB drive. Some
Re: (Score:2)
If you keep your life on it (Score:5, Insightful)
static electricity, magnetic fields? (Score:2)
What to do with it? (Score:5, Funny)
Windows Vista Service Pack 1 !
There's never enough storage ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Two years ago it would have been:
But at 1GB you could keep a good bit of your life there, provided you aren't working in audio or video. I keep a 64MB stick on my keychain which is enough for almost anything.
Four years ago it would have been:
But at 64MB you could keep a good bit of your life there, provided you aren't working in audio or video. The convenience would make this a useful investment and allow us to throw the good old floppy away for good.
In 2010 it'll be:
But at 512GB you could keep a good bit of your life there. I keep a 32GB stick on my keychain which is enough for almost anything.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Booting and security ... (Score:3, Interesting)
> Vista will be able to boot off flash drives and, just possibly, U3 flash drives will turn PCs into thin clients.
I predict a return of the boot virus and you won't even know you're carrying it to every box, just because the last one didn't boot right. And btw, Vista can also walk your dog, make breakfast and do your homework - just like it used to be able to do WinFS and so many other wonderful things which later got pulled.
Once as an experiment, I turned on BOOTP on my linux server in office and loaded up a 14 Mb initrd into the tftpd, during the weekend. To my surprise, on monday half the office machines were booting into a linux command line and all the administrators were tearing their hair out.
Secondly, most offices I know are starting to disable their USB connectors and some of the better ones are disabling the USB data pins (ipods still charge, but no copying). 16 Gb is a lot of data that can be pulled out of a place, especially with something which is magnet free (most of these places have scanners for magnetic media).
But it is a limited edition drive right nowRe: (Score:3, Informative)
not enough? (Score:2)
Famous last words. Remember the days - not too long ago - when a floppy drive was "enough".
The truth is that with video capture devices becoming cheap, and consumer generated content and sharing fast becoming a social trend, I'm sure you'll hear about a 16GB personal drive being not "enough" pretty soon!
DON'T BE INADEQUATE ANY MORE! (Score:3, Funny)
A limited edition? (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering "640K shoudl be enough for everyone", we'll be carrying 32GB flashier soon, and the 16GB limited edition won't be anything special
At 8x2 cm it's not the smallest thing (Score:2)
Flash Drive OS (Score:4, Interesting)
When you're talking about 16GBs, you could almost do away with your normal hard drive and use web based drives for storage. Portable computers would be lighter. Perhaps you could even increase the speed of the drive with caching (perhaps it's already done...).
I'd like a flash drive I could put my OS on and not worry about it's data integrity.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
You already can install on os on you flash drive. SLAX [slax.org] would definitely be my favorite, since it has KDE, rather than one of the "light" window managers in Puppy, DSL, and the other small live distros use. I even found some directions [newsforge.com] so you can leave it as Fat.
You can have SLAX load to ram if you have about 512mb available. As for writing files, I believe that all writes are writen to RAM and when you shut down you are given the option of making writes permanent.
"automatically launch the U3 Launchpad software?" (Score:2)
"On insertion into a PC, all the U3(TM) models automatically launch the U3(TM) Launchpad software integrated into the memory, which presents the user with a list of programs to choose from and files to work with."
So I'm guessing this is pretty much useless with my Linux boxes...
Sounds like a good thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Replacement (Score:2, Funny)
got one already, from Apple Computer (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides carrying my files in it, I plug in my headphones and listen to music while I'm working out.
Bigger & Bigger, Smaller & Smaller (Score:3, Insightful)
Not sure why the fuss over 16GB USB Flash... (Score:2, Interesting)
For me at least, the huge $2,799 USD price tag will keep it out of my pocket for at least a little while. But one thing's for sure: prices always come down. Wonder what this will go for this time next year.
Re: (Score:2)
Now is a good time (Score:3, Interesting)
....for flash storage in notebooks. I for one would LOVE a notebook with "only" 16 GB of storage...provided that 16 GB was flash. No spinning motors and platters means a more useful, portable device.
OLD NEWS (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
transfer rate? (Score:3, Insightful)
Kanguru has a 64GB drive (Score:2)
Of course it's $2800 US from TigerDirect.
Put an IDE interface on it (Score:2)
Question about lifespan MTBF of flash vs hdd (Score:2)
Would it really? What is the lifespan on these things in read/write cycle terms? Showing my own ignorance here, but I've been concerned that flash just doesn't have what it takes it you are doing lots of read/write/erase/over-write actions. I have an idea for a fanless embedded device (where I have no real expeience) that will have a bunch of read/writes and I'm torn between the tradeoff of lots of heat but reliable HDD and low-heat but worse MTBF of flash (or s
size (Score:2)
BTW do that have a good directory structure? (Score:2)
Re:BTW do that have a good directory structure? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
16GB? Over USB 2.0? Are you people insane? (Score:2)
If we had usable ebook hardware... (Score:2)
building automation systems (Score:2)
-b.
How about 64 GB? (Score:2)
That might be true (Score:2, Funny)
Yea, if you're an empty shell of a human being.
It's not the size of a man's dongle that matters.. (Score:4, Funny)
What to do with 16GB??? (Score:2)
Farwell to DVDs! (Score:2)
http://weblands.blogspot.com/2006/08/eulogy-on-di
What about the devices you already carry? (Score:2)
Portable applications (Score:2)
Although most portable app are for Linux (or have both Linux and Window versions). Few Windows apps are portable because (I think) Windows developers are piss poor developers. One look at the registry of the average Windows PC proves my point. Creating portable and easily editable config files seem to be beyond the skills of most Windows developers.
Is that a 16GB Flash USB Dongle in your pocket? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Actually it's pretty bad commenting. 60GB IPods contain hard disks, not flash. And an ipod isn't nearly as small as USB storage you can hang on your keychain.
Re: (Score:2)
What are you talking about. They are releasing a 16GB drive, not a 60gb drive. They mentioned a 64GB drive in the article, but no one is talking about a 60GB drive except you.
-1 Redundant?! (Score:2)