Tech Review

PNY 4GB USB 2.0 Protable Drive-Enhanced For Windows Readyboost

Now that we're on good terms with the French, I thought I'd choose the PNY Attache' for my next thumb drive. Well, that, and it was on sale at Staples. PNY says:

* High performance, low power consumption, non-volatile storage
* Store, erase and reuse. Attaché drives can be reused over and over without loss of quality
* Attaché® drives will perform in a variety of climates, weather conditions and temperature extremes
* Attaché® comes with a one year warranty
* Toll free technical support

I'm glad it works in a variety of climates. I don't really need it since I'm in Southern California, but it's nice to know that I don't have to buy a thumb drive for each region of the world (And, providing tech support for thumb drives must be a very exciting profession).

PNY Attache 1GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive ( P-FD01GU20-RF )

Follow up:

Pny P-Fd02Gsec-Rf 2 Gb Secure Attache Portable Usb 2.0 Flash Drive With 256-Bit Aes Encryption

Design:

The design doesn't contain any fancy flairs like capacity meters or switch-blade movements. The lid is removable, but it can't be secured on the back like the Sandisk ones. If I'm careful, I shouldn't lose it for a couple of months.

I can't figure out why the rest of the drive has a removable plastic skin as well. Maybe it's to make it thinner for closely stacked USB ports. The plastic is of better quality than the Sandisk, but the Attache isn't ruggedized like the Sandisk Titanium or the Corsair Flash Survivor. The activity light is a small LED in the front-center of the unit. A rear LED is the best configuration simply because it's easier to see.

8GB USB2.0 Voyager 31MB/S Read 12MB/S Write Sec Sw Rubber Case

SanDisk 4 GB Cruzer Titanium USB Flash Drive with U3

The rear has an hole for keychains, but the near frictionless action of the drive cap makes me even more nervous about losing it- not that you'd want to plug a drive with 14 keys into your laptop.

Performance:

I understand why people would focus more on style and capacity than on speed, but speed is important two reasons: First, of course, is the transferring of files- fast is better than slow. Second, with many programs capable of running strait from the flash drive, the quicker speed will pay off eventually in productivity.

I compared the Optima Pro to it's country-mouse cousin, the regular Attache. The Attache Pro is much faster. A 150MB file took 38 seconds with the regular Attache while the Pro version took only 16. Launching OpenOffice Writer from PortableApps took 8 seconds on the old Attache and 4 seconds on the Pro.

The Attache is able to take advantage of a Vista feature called Readyboost. It's supposed to speed up your computer by accessing the flash drive instead of the computer's slower hard drive. I looked it up on Wikipedia:

In the cases where a system has 512 MB of RAM (the bare minimum for Windows Vista - not advisable), the largest gains are 47% [2] (the test benchmark included Adobe Photoshop CS3 along with 22 images, iTunes, Microsoft Word 2007, Adobe Reader 8 and an Explorer Window). However, on systems with 1 GB or more, ReadyBoost has a negligible effect (small enough to be explained as experimental error)[citation needed].

I'm shocked. Shocked! that Microsoft would market something of little use to the average computer user. I predict 34 people worldwide would use their thumbdrive in such a manner.

The drive doesn't have any software of its own like U3 or Seagate's Creedo, but I prefer Portable Apps anyways. In fact, Portable Apps is an essential program, for the reasons here.

Bottom Line:

I think the extra speed is worth it. The design isn't ideal. If you have a special need, PNY also has the following drives:

Attache (above)

Mini Attaché

Mini Attaché USB 2.0 Flash Drive

XLR8 (has swing cap)

PNY XLR8 4GB USB2.0 Portable Flash Drive

Collegiate Attaché (Go Bruins!)

All-Terrain Attaché

All-terrain Attaché USB 2.0 Flash Drive

Evolution Attaché

Evolution Drive 8IN1 Reader 256MB Flash Drive USB 2.0

Executive Attaché (looks like a pen)

PNY P-EFD512U20K-RF Executive Attaché Flash Drive

MaxFile Attaché

8GB USB 2.0 Maxfile Attache

Secure Attaché

Pny P-Fd02Gsec-Rf 2 Gb Secure Attache Portable Usb 2.0 Flash Drive With 256-Bit Aes Encryption

IronKey