The big ‘wow’ arrival was Sony’s Micro Vault Pro. The device measures 3.25 by 2.5 inches by 0.5 inch, which is big compared with flash memory-based USBs, but because it holds 5G bytes we’d suggest its size is not surprising.
More USB drives have arrived! Christmas is early!
The big “wow” arrival was Sony’s Micro Vault Pro. The device measures 3.25 by 2.5 inches by 0.5 inch, which is big compared with flash memory-based USBs, but because it holds 5G bytes we’d suggest its size is not surprising.
Although it looks like an oversized USB flash drive, under the hood there’s a surprise: It doesn’t use flash memory – it is really a 1-inch Seagate ST650211 CF drive formatted as a standard compact flash memory card.
The Micro Vault Pro’s USB 2.0 connector is on an arm that swivels out of the drive case, and the activity light is a large “5GB” logo on the side back-illuminated in a sexy blue.
The drive comes with a neat file synchronization utility (called rather dully Auto Sync) that you install on your Windows PC (sorry Macintosh users). This program will synchronize specified files on a PC to the Micro Vault Pro in any or all of four modes: Manually, when the drive is inserted in to a PC’s USB port, on file close or every X minutes. It supports versioning (up to 10 versions) and provides manual and automatic conflict resolution.
When not in use the drive can be stored in the provided stiff plastic sleeve. This sleeve has a loop for a lanyard on one side, but you’ll have to supply your own lanyard for that “geek around the office” look.
Our only complaint about this drive concerns the plastic sleeve. The drive locks into the nubs inside the sleeve quite firmly in one of two positions, completely in the sleeve or partly exposed. Extracting the drive when it is in the partly exposed position is not too hard, but in the fully inserted position it requires a death-grip hold to get it out.
That minor complaint aside, the drive is fast and costs about $220. At around $44 per G byte it is certainly more expensive than many standard USB-interfaced external disk drives (they cost about $5 to $10 per G byte), but the increased portability and sheer coolness may well persuade you to part with your cash.
Sony also sent an Ultra Mini Micro Vault drive, which is one of the smallest and sleekest flash-based USB drives we have seen – its whole look and feel shout “Sony” – but unfortunately it was dead on arrival.
We understand from Sony that the failure rate for these devices is 0.5%, which is 1 in 200, and that sounds surprisingly high. Apparently this device includes some hot software that provides around a 3-to-1 compression. More on this when the replacement drive arrives.
Our final USB drive for today is the Stealth Surfer II produced by Stealth Ideas. This drive is encrypted, and you can’t see anything on the drive other than the unlock program until you enter the correct password. The Stealth Surfer comes with Anonymizer, which allows for anonymous surfing; the Firefox Web browser to surf with; RoboForm, which can manage all your logons and other private data (this is a product we love!); the Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client; and Hushmail, a high-security Web mail system.
With this collection of tools, you can keep your online activities as private as you please. In fact, Stealth Ideas pushes the concept that you can use this product to cover your tracks at work, which seems ethically dubious.
The problem with this product is that its execution leaves something to be desired. For example, you have to exit all the included applications then log out of the encryption system before you can eject the device from your system. We accidentally logged out before quitting the applications and Windows XP crashed. Not good.
The Stealth Surfer is not for the average user – it is not well integrated enough to be easy to operate, and at $100 for the 128M-byte version, we think the system could be a lot more polished.
Stealth comments to gearhead@gibbs.com. By the way, for additional excitement we’ve merged Gearblog with Gibbsblog – check it out.
