Lexar announces ReadyBoost-friendly thumb drives

We're not really sure how excited we can get over a new set of flash drives, but Lexar's doing its damnedest to shake things up here at CES by announcing a pair of 'em. The JumpDrive 360 (pictured) is a hinged drive that protects the USB jack, so you'll never have to worry about losing that cap again. The second of the pair, the JumpDrive Mercury, is a souped-up version of the one we saw around this time last year (including that capacity meter) except that it now comes out in 1GB and 2GB sizes. Keep in mind that all of these drives are ReadyBoost-certified, just like those others that we've seen of late. Be sure to check the pics of the Mercury on the flip side.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 8th 2007 12:14AM]

I don't really understand this whole ReadyBoost USB-memory thing. Why would you want a USB-memory to stick out from your computer all the time? I think it would have been better if the mother board manufacturers instead would integrate 256 or 512 MB of memory directly on the motherboard to use with ReadyBoost.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 8th 2007 7:00PM]

From Engadget

"(ReadyBoost is) a new feature that allows the OS to use flash drives as pseudo-RAM in order to increase performance"

There would be no point in adding memory just to use with ReadyBoost because all it does is act as RAM. So you can get what you want by just adding more RAM.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 8th 2007 1:36AM]

"ReadyBoost-certified" my hugh jass! This is rubbish. Any decent flash drive will work with ReadyBoost already. It doesn't need anything special; just a decent read/write speed. Cheap marketing ploy.

I cried wolf the last time one of these "ReadyBoost-compatible" drives came out. I believe my exact words were: "This is BS. Any USB drive of decent quality will function with ReadyBoost. Shame on you for falling for such a pathetic marketing ploy, Engadget."

Engadget hasn't seemed to pick up on it yet...

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 8th 2007 2:10AM]

I like the looks of that swivel drive. Too many of these drives are super bulky even though there's not a lot of real estate around my usb slots but that one looks nice and slim.

BTW, crying wolf implies you were lying to get people's attention. I know you meant crying foul but I thought I'd point it out anyway.

[Daliminator Posted Jan 8th 2007 2:18PM]

@Hugh Jass: NOT all so-called "decent quality" drives will work with Vista. Even very recently-released flash drives simply don't have sufficient random read/write speeds spread across the drive. These super-fast drives with 133x and 150x speed ratings are rated by peak performance, which differs enormously from random access speeds and ignores the uniform-access-across-the-drive bit completely.

While there were certainly a number of capable drives out before "ReadyBoost certified" labels, several of my friends and I have had little luck with even high-speed drives on Vista Business Edition (obtained, thanks to Microsoft, far in advance of launch =P) - only one drive (the most expensive, incidentally) was able to be used. So BS to you, sir.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 8th 2007 7:56PM]

daliminator2000 is correct. A high speed rating on a thumb drive (100x, 150x, etc) does not guarantee whether the thumb drive can work with Vista's ReadyBoost feature. See http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx for more technical details.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 8th 2007 4:41PM]

dalminator is correct. Rated/marketed peak speed on thumb drives does not guarantee they will work with ReadyBoost.

ReadyBoost Q&A - http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx