Any Transformer fanbois and fangals around here? It’s just around the corner, and from what I heard the tickets are sold out, so why not buy this new USB flash drive and go sob at the corner just coz you just missed out on the most anticipated action movie of the year, in 3D!

These particular Mimobots come in the likeness of everyone’s second favourite morphing robot rivals — Optimus Prime and Megatron. (Obviously Cy-Kill and Leader-1 take the top slot in our hearts, step aside you sissy Bumblebee!) Sadly, these Transformer thumb drives don’t actually transform (well at least you can remove their head), but they do come preloaded with screensavers, wallpapers, and digital comics… if you’re into that sort of thing.

The Autobot and Decepticon leaders are available now, starting at $23 for 2GB of storage and reaching $60 for the 16GB model. Why so expensive you ask? Well, collections!

We’ve seen people stuffing Linux into portable USB drives, and some ‘lite’ version Windows XP too. But now, it seems that Windows 8 will also have a similar feature. A recently leaked Windows 8 shows that there’s a feature called Portable Workspaces, which enables you to take a 16GB (or greater) external storage device and dump a bootable, runnable copy of Win 8 on there. It remains to be seen just how many copies one could create, and whether they ever expire or, indeed, whether they can themselves be copied onto an HDD like a ghost image, but it’s easy to see this as a boon for support personnel. Hopefully this will improve the privacy of mobile desktop

SOURCE via Winrumors

Here is a concept USB drive that many might find it very welcome. If you used to have some Windows Mobile smartphone, then you’ll be familiar with microSD cards in the 1GB and 2GB size. This concept USB drive, dubbed The Collector, could potentially solve our conundrum by allowing us to toss all those thumb drives and find a use for our microSD chips that are scattered all over the place.

The Collector does not have any storage of its own, but instead you can slip in up to three microSD cards. It would also combine your smaller chunks of storage into a single block, so those three 2GB scraps would become a slightly less useless 6GB drive.

Efficient recycling method from Yanko. Someone must build this!

SOURCE via Yanko Design

USB3.0 is starting to go mainstream these days with decent price, although the prices aren’t anywhere near the price of USB2.0 yet. Buffalo is set to drop yet another new line of USB3.0 handy drive, dubbed the ‘RUF3-SS’ for the Japanese market.

Coming in capacities ranging from 8GB to 64GB, these drives feature a USB 3.0/2.0 connection interface and promise to deliver transfer speeds of up to 71MB/s. The RUF3-SS USB 3.0 flash drives will become available in Japan early next month for $33.2 (8GB), $59.5 (16GB), $113.3 (32GB) and $212.8 (64GB), respectively. Sadly there’s no news on when they’ll be available worldwide.

SOURCE via Buffalo

Ask Super Talent if you need a really small flash drive, like really small. Super Talent has recently unveiled the new Pico Mini USB flash drives series that consists of two models, the Pico Mini C and Pico Mini D. The Pico Mini C has a retractable USB connector that tucks away inside a case, while the Pico Mini D has a case that slides up and down to hide the USB connector. What’s more, the Mini D also has a connector that will let you hang it on a key ring. Both models are offered in 2GB to 32GB of storage capacity. However, they didn’t mention about the price and the date of launch.

SOURCE via Slashgear

Yes, USB 3.0 peripherals are getting more and more in our market, and that’s a good thing. However, their prices will still make them a premium product. But not anymore. Super Talent has just set the new bar for MSRPs on these flash drives. Thinking that you can milk those innocent customers with your USB 2.0 flash drives in the upcoming holiday season? Then try beating Super Talent. Their new USB 3.0 Express Duo line is available in 8GB and 16GB capacities, with each offering USB 3.0 speeds, USB 2.0 backwards compatibility and price points of $14 and $29, respectively.

SOURCE via Super Talent

Hello Kitty. Who would’ve liked them, all pinky and acting innocent? I guess the whole world really loves them, as I recall people queuing up at McDonalds early in the morning to get Hello Kitty stuff, some way over 10 years ago. And Sanrio’s lucrative partnership with Mimoco has spun the famous cat’s rep into… more awesome flash drives. Like we don’t have enough cute flash drives out there already.

It seems like Sanrio is always celebrating some kind of birthday, and for the company’s 50th anniversary they’ve busted out more than their fair share of gear. This time, it’s a “classic” Hello Kitty flash drive that comes in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB capacities. We’re kind of in love with Kitty’s elongated face on this model, so if you so choose, you can grab one of these up for a starting price of $34.95.

SOURCE via Mimoco

Kingston has just announced their very first USB 3.0 flash drives, in the form of a portable and compact SSD stick. Called the DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0, it is Kingston’s first dive into the superfast highway of thumb drives. The drive itself is said to be able to pull up some decent fights with speed of up to 80MB/sec and write speeds of 60MB/sec. It’s available in a trio of sizes of 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, with a five-year warranty affixed to each. Typical thumb drives’ limited warranty thought. Sadly, with all SSDs, the great news only stops at the speed. As with the price, it’s regrettably to say that such speed and capaciousness would stun you for a few second before taking out your cherry card, as these fellows are priced at $89, $138 and $270 in order of mention.

Inside the drive is a Jmicron JMF612 controller, the same controller used in Kingston’s value SSDs. Kingston connects the JMF612 via two ribbon cables to a separate PCB with four Toshiba NAND devices on it. It’s important to note that SSDs get their performance by reading from/writing to many NAND devices in parallel, so the use of multiple (four chips in this case) helps.The result is a thumb drive that performs more like a value SSD rather than a traditional thumb drive. With the USB 3.0 connector built in, there’s no need to carry around an extra cable. Well, not exactly.

While you won’t find any problem running this tiny white knight on your typical USB 2.0 port (so as Kingston claim), the recommended method to ensure USB 2.0 compatibility is to use the supplied Y-cable in the packing. The USB 3.0 spec allows for more power over a single port than USB 2.0. Carrying the Y-cable is a pain in the shiny metal butt if your desktop and laptop do not have USB 3.0 ports, but one way or another you’re going to have to carry around some additional bulk if you want an external USB 3.0 SSD these days, so hopefully that won’t give much of a burden.

Somehow Kingston uses a lot of thermal padding inside the drive. This is rather due to the heat caused by the ‘many’ NAND chips in the thumb drive. During full operation, the drive surface can easily reach a temperature of 38 degrees Celsius (100.4F). Kingston stated that the DT Ultimate 3.0 have an operating temperature ranges from 0°C to 60°C (32F – 140F), but don’t worry about that as the 5 years warranty will easily cover that. Though it is always save to have a backup copy of your data at any time. Who knows when these NAND chips will fail you.

To put the sort of performance we’re talking about here in perspective, you can copy a full dual-layer 9GB DVD image from Kingston’s DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 in less than two and a half minutes. However, the prices are still far fetching from current USB 2.0 devices’ prices. But it’s good to know that you do have a choice if speed is your concern.

[Kingston via Anandtech]

Manufacturers of USB drive used to place security programs in their drives to provide some sort of security for consumers. Somehow, all that was missing these past few years when the market was flooded with zillions of USB drives from all sorts of manufacturers. Now Verbatim is back to the ‘secured drive’ business, with their latest Secure ‘n’ Go USB drive.

The drive comes with a 256bit-AES hardware-encryption and password protection. The drive is also enhanced and compatible for Windows ReadyBoost feature, which improves your system’s performance by allowing your PC to sue the memory capacity on your flash drive to speed up system performance.

The Verbatim Secure ‘n’ Go Secure Data drive is now available in 4GB ($37), 8GB ($74), and 16GB ($125).

SOURCE via Verbatim

A-Data seemed to be aiming hard at the USB flash drive market. Here’s their newest addition to A-Data’s USB flash drive line-up, the C008. Coming in capacities ranging from 2GB to 32GB, these capless flash drives feature a matte-textured, scratchproof body and have a retractable USB 2.0/1.1 connector. Unfortunately, there’s no word on pricing and release date yet, but I’m sure they can set a nice rival to those Kingston and Pendriv with such nice features.

SOURCE via A-Data