Kingston unveils 256GB thumb drive for well-heeled memory fiends
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted July 20th 2009 10:56AM
posted July 20th 2009 10:56AM
We're sure that it's only a matter of moments before a 256GB thumb drive this bulky is something of a joke -- hell, it wasn't so terribly long ago that cramming 256MB into something this size was an accomplishment. That said, if you're a netbook user looking for a storage bump, it looks like Kingston's got your back: this guy boasts transfer rates of up to 20 MB/sec. read and 10 MB/sec. write, and for all of you Vista fans, supports Windows ReadyBoost. Now, for the bad news: only available in Europe and the UK, and custom made upon your order (presumably after the check clears) this modern technological marvel will run you £565.67 ($924).
[Via TBreak]
[Via TBreak]
@ Mindboggle: What? I'm English and consider myself European. You do know that the UK is part of the European Union regardless of whether it uses the European Single Currency or not? That's without explaining the obvious geographic evidence. Go read some books numnuts.
What the hell are you on about "we speak the dreaded English" because the rest of Europe speaks some Euro language?
The UK has been part of the common European market since the 60's (before the EU) and much of our legal system is aligned with the European community. We also incorporate the European Convention on Human Rights which is completely separate from the EU but further shows that the UK does consider itself part of Europe. As far as us not using the Euro only 16 of the 27 EU countries are part use the single currency and as far as us not being on the same land mass that’s like saying Japan is not in Asia!
Lucky for the rest of us that ignorant people like you who don’t understand how laws and economics work and just focus on Daily Mail politics never come to power.
im also english and also always thought of myself as european....
i must admit though uk is more like a us subcontinent when it comes to politics and entertainment. always pisses me off how we get the history of america and us news on radio 4. i mean , sure, important news events are fine , but wtf do i care about us senator sotamayooor.
i'm european and i consider the UK as a part of europe. and so does everybody else, stop trying to be something special because you're not
it could be worse, you could have won the war and then our crap would be on all your channels. plus, i would take 1 foreign news channel over the 20 QVC channels we have here in the states.
that was to sinjinn. sorry :-\
The first thing I struggled over too!! Just because a few selected countries haven't adopted the Euro (UK, Sweden, Denmark etc) doesn't mean they're not a part of Europe (or the European Union for that matter)
It is really odd to say and wrong..
Of course the UK is a part of Europe, and I have never thought of it as anything else.
Lol. It's nice to see the Europeans getting just as worked over the internets as us excitable Americans.
*worked up
LOL This thing takes 256 * 2 ** 30 / (10 * 2 ** 20) / 3600 = 7.28 hours to fill up.
Slick math.
Genius maths!
£565? No thanks.
I'll just wait until I find one on the train.
Don't be silly, no-one could possibly forget an item that big on the train.
This is cool. They can charge this much cause atm it's the only one of its kind available. Just wait 6 months or less.
Hooray for Kingston for pusingh things forward!
With my carelessness I think I'll be better off buying 256 1Gbs, or 128 2Gbs instead
And once you raid0 them you'll instantly regret your carelessness.
Wow... For the price of one of these stupid flash drives, you can almost buy FOUR Netbooks!! (which, ingeniously, this thing was built for) Great thinking, Kingston! I hope you sell a lot of these to all those wealthy netbook owners who have loads and loads of disposable income. (yes, according to Kingston, these people actually EXIST... My guess is somewhere in the country of U.R.anidiot)
Just because you don't have that sort of disposable income, does not mean other people don't.
:S
Yeah you forget about your elected officials and their write-off trickery, in the UK they can write it off as a replacement of their previous thumb drive which they lost in the tube or a taxi or bar, the one with the complete records of 50K people you know, this one can hold a million people's record and is a nice step up.
looks like Kingston just jerry-rigged two 128 GB flash chips inside this monstrosity, no thanks
It does indeed look like that, but they also fused them and present them as a single drive, so that's sorta handy perhaps, well worth a few hundred extra eh.
Ahh... 256 gigs of ReadyBoost ram... wayyyy overkill... if you're spending 1 grand on a flash drive you obviously aren't buying it for that purpose.
Yeah, with that much storage, you should be able to do a RAID configuration or something. I guess ReadyRaid doesn't have quite the same ring to it though.
ReadyRaid ... sounds like a bugspray
ok.... looks like the time is right for Microsoft to intro a portable version of Windows so all we need is to plug one into a service station somewhere and we have all our OS and data all in one small (relatively speaking) package....
WinPE.
That is a painfully slow transfer rate! Especially for that price!
It's already so big...why not just put two USB ports on it to double the data transfer speed? Oh, and then since it's obviously two 128mb chips, you could link each chip to a USB port so you more easily separate your data. Oh, and then you could make it split apart so you don't have to carry both if you don't need them.
Oh wait....
I remember when 256MB was big…
If they can fit 256GB into something so small they could surely make 1TB SSDs. I'd also be willing to pay £500 to have that 256GB in my iPod Classic, better battery life, robustness, and nearly an extra 100GB over the old 160GB model.
They do make 1TB SSDs, and even bigger ones too.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/05/bitmicro-keeps-it-real-unveils-1-6tb-ultra320-scsi-ssd/
Cheers dude, can't believe I missed that. I presumed that with everyone making a big deal about 320GB or so drives that they were the highest capacity so far.
simple math says 7 hours to fill... no thanks.
Kinda' bulky.
Cool
I dare to trust 16gb worth of data on a flash drive. The memory chips can go bad, the USB plug itself isn't THAT robust (it's only held on by 5 pins on a pcb). You better hope you have a backup.
What backup, this IS your backup (N)
cool i like it if it was only 10 dollars cheaper
hurm 900 dollars worth of flash drive roaming around in your pocket going from computer to bag to pocket to computer, maybe this isnt such a good buy even if it has just as much storage space as my desktop
bigger than my hard drive...
pls...no "that's what she said" jokes
that's what she said.
(you dared me)
At this price and capacity, no e-sata is just stupid.
that's some crazy pricing there. I wonder when will we see this come down to $30.....
Is that a Data Traveler 300 in your pants or are you just happy to see me?
http://img.moronail.net/img/6/7/767.jpg
When I saw the price that is.
I wonder how long would it take to see "bad sector" error popping up.
1000 dollars.