What have Pocket, Mini USB, Travelling, Pen plus many more proprietary names in common? They are all Mules for transferring data, as is the Belkin USB Flash Drive.
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This handy data mover has been around in some form or other for at least a year, various other names may be etched on the mind but often the name is copyrighted. It seems strange when, floppy, CD, DVD and hard all settled on one generic name that all the various manufacturers decided to call a similar device different names.
Belkin were not by any means the first into this already crowded market. In some ways this gives them a big advantage, they can learn by other manufacturers mistakes.
Belkin products will never be the cheapest, they offer a three year warranty on the Flash Drive and on some of there products such as surge protectors they offer unlimited £ connected equipment lifetime warranty. As they have been around for a long time they must be confident in their products abilities.
The USB Flash drive needs no drivers for users of PCs later than Windows 98. A mini CD is provided with a Windows 98 driver. Other users just plug into a USB port Windows has a think for a few seconds and installs a driver now you have another drive letter in My Computer. Files can be dragged and dropped to and from it just like a huge floppy disc.
A feature that not all of these types of drives have is password protection. Another is the ability to write protect, a tiny notch on the side has a slider to protect data just like the notch on a floppy disc.
Now on to features that are more or less unique (well I dont know any other manufacturer that has them) a lanyard that fits onto the base of the device and can go round your neck to join the range of identity cards etc. Second a pen clip that means it can clip into a pocket this fits onto the base of the drive. I would only wonder if the cap ever gets lost. Finally a .67 metre extension USB cable for those of us who only have USB ports at the rear of a PC and whose backs do not appreciate the stretching to insert and remove that much. Just leave the trailing lead and insert when required.
The data transfer rate is stated at a maximum of 1 Mb/s for both reading and writing, this will be slower if you only have USB 1.1 but it still works as a very good Mule
During data transfer both send and receive - a tiny LED flashes on the unit to denote data transfer. Belkin like most other manufacturers have a range of sizes the most popular being 128MB and 256MB I reviewed the former. The price is around £48 (Dabs)
Link: http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Merchant_Id=1&Product_Id=133672
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