Remember those halcyon days when the whole world tingled with excitement as the first 8MB USB Flash drives were made commercially available? And what a price we all paid for them. Things have certainly moved on at an incredible pace in the few short years since then, only last month Kingston announced the world's first 128GB Flash drive and already the bar has been raised with the announcement of a 256GB monster - the Kingston Data Traveler 300.
Kingston says that the new 256GB drive will hold around 365 full music CDs or 48,640 MP3s can be stored on one drive. If movies are your thing, the DT300 will oblige by letting you store up to 54 full DVDs or 10 Blu-ray discs worth of cinematic entertainment and even the most snap-happy photographer might struggle to fill the unit's 51,328 image capacity (based on 10MP per image).
The drive can be used on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms but the function that allows up to 90% of stored content to be password protected will only work with Windows. Windows Vista users will also benefit from it being Readyboost enhanced.
The cap-less 70.68 mm x 16.90 mm x 21.99 mm (2.78" x 0.67" x 0.87 in) stick is fast too, with claimed transfer rates of up to 20 MB/sec read and 10 MB/sec write. Kingston also offers 24/7 tech support and a 5 year warranty.
The downside? It's expensive at £599 delivered (that equates to USD$982 at time of publication). Those outside Europe, the Middle East, Africa (EMEA) or Asia Pacific (APAC) are going to have to curb your enthusiasm for now.
More information can be found on the Kingston website.
Given recent developments, we might not have to wait too long before the first 1TB Flash drive arrives.
