Flowers + USB drive = Happy Women?
April 9th, 2008 by Eva Meszaros
I’m not sure what incited the demand for floral-print flash drives. Are these tiny storage units really so unsightly as is? SanDisk did a number on its ug-tastic Fleur USB drive a few months back. PNY Technologies announced on Monday its Lady Attaché drive, adorned with a gothic floral design, in 2GB and 4GB capacities. And Transcend recently released its own artistic interpretation of what tech women want in the JetFlash 168, which harbors a more impressive 16GB of space. It features what Transcend’s press release describes as “intricate oriental artistry,” and we hear proceeds will go to lessons in political correctness for the company’s PR team.
Transcend at least couples the JetFlash’s etched design—representing “a delicate balance of cutting-edge technology and exquisite transitional beauty” or something—with some pretty sweet features women may care more about than the zen pseudo-philosophy: Windows Vista ReadyBoost compatibility (to use the drive as an extra memory boost for your notebook), free JetFlash elite software (loaded with security and backup options), and a lifetime warranty. Remember, designers, we like pretty and practical.

Our friends at
Western Digital today announced the Elite version of its My Passport portable storage line. The new designs come in 250GB ($189) and 320GB ($219) flavors and weigh less than 5 ounces.
This morning Transcend took the wraps off the StoreJet 25 Mobile, a 7.2-ounce portable hard drive that features a shockproof silicon outer shell for protecting your cherished documents, music, video, photos, and other files. The drive meets the U.S. military drop-test standard, making it a pretty rugged little device.
It’s amazing to think that when I bought my first PC in 1997, my “massive” 5GB hard drive seemed as though it was enough storage to last me well into the next decade. I quickly discovered the folly of that thinking when I discovered a little program called Napster. These days flash drive capacity has increased at such a rapid rate that it’s downright funny to reflect back on my first HDD and think of it as anything other than dinky.
Are you a fan of the solid-state drive found within the
Twenty years ago we kept photos in albums and music in Walkmans, but nowadays so much of our cherished content lives within our notebooks, leaving us just one hard drive failure away from uncontrollable sobs and swearing. Fortunately, external drives such as Buffalo’s MiniStation TurboUSB are available to provided a much-needed back-sup security blanket.