SanDisk launches Cruzer Blade USB thumblet drive
Fits in a thimble
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SanDisk has launched what it calls a paperclip-size USB thumb drive, designed to fit on a key ring and store from 2GB to 16GB of data.
The Cruzer Blade is not the smallest-ever thumblet drive but is about half the size of an ordinary USB thumb drive.
Traxdata claims to have the world's smallest thumb drive, the MICRO USB. The Pico USB flash drive is the size of a finger nail, fits in a thimble and has a ring for keyring attachment.
With these thumblet drives the USB plug is bigger than the actual flash chip and mount. Really, the damn things can't go any smaller - you have to be able to hold one whilst sticking it into a USB slot.
The Cruzer Blade is available now in the United States and Canada at sandisk.com, with prices ranging from $14.99 to $77.99. ®
COMMENTS
Available in the UK for ages
Had mine (8GB) for months and months, seems very reliable and plenty quick enough so far. Even works when windows is booted in safe mode which a lot of other USB drives apparently don't (about the only one in the office that worked when we needed to put emergency AV updates on to all boxes).
Not new, and even Sandisk themselves do smaller
Yup, I bought two of these in Argos months ago (around easter I think). They're OK but by no means the smallest. In fact Sandisk themselves do a smaller one.
For the one I keep on my keyring I bought one of the Sandisk 8GB MicroSD cards that comes with a tiny USB adaptor (http://www.sandisk.com/products/mobile-memory-products/sandisk-mobilemate-micro-reader) and that makes a pretty cost-effective and really tiny USB drive, about half the size of this supposedly new Sandisk offering, and I can always upgrade it as prices drop by swapping the microSD card for a bigger one.
On a keyring it's always tied to the bunch of keys so one can't really have a USB drive that's too small (i.e. easily lost). Works for me.
- Julian
I put mine in my pocket...
..and it gets lost in the small change. Tried to buy a newspaper with it, then I nearly fed it to the dog, thought it was a dog treat. Oops.
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