Not all thumb drives are created equal...

A USB flash drive is something pretty basic, right? It's a little keychain-sized device that plugs into your computer's USB port, and has capacity ranging from 128MB all the way up to 2GB. Not too complicated...which would mean that any drive you can find would be just fine, and your only deciding factor is price.

Not so.

It is my humble opinion that the Kingston DataTraveler line of USB drives is superior to any other brand out there (SanDisk, Lexar, etc.).

There are three big things to be careful of when using a thumb drive - the drive itself and the cap that covers the USB port, and the size of the drive.

Most USB drives these days come with lanyards or keychain-style loops, allowing you to attach the device to a laptop bag, backpack, wallet, or around your neck. This drive comes with a little nylon strap with a metal ring on one end. You can loop the strap through the plastic loop at the rear of the drive, and attach the drive to your keychain via the metal ring. This works out nicely.

However, the biggest folly of all with most USB drives is the cap. It's important that you don't lose the cap, as this protects the USB port from dirt, grime, water, and any other contaminant that could kill the USB connector, rendering the drive useless (and your data inaccessible).

The Kingston DataTraveler design solves the USB cap problem twofold - the cap snaps on extremely securely over the USB port, making it easy to toss the drive into your pocket, car, purse, or bag without worrying about losing the cap. Secondly, the cap actually snaps onto the rear of the drive when you remove it to plug the drive into a USB port. Not only that, but it attaches quite securely in that case as well, making it simple to pull out the drive in a hurry without worrying about losing the cap off the rear end of the drive. I had a Lexar Secure 128MB thumb drive with a cap that refused to stay on at all. It was worthless in that sense, and made the drive less portable when you have to be paranoid about where the cap is. I also had a SanDisk Attache thumb drive, and the cap stayed on, but there was nowhere to put it when I was using the drive - again, I had to worry about losing it.

The third problem with most USB drives is the size. My Lexar drive was too fat on the sides to fit into oddly-shaped USB ports, like the one on my Tangerine iBook G3. The SanDisk drive was a little too thick vertically, so that if it was plugged into a USB port on my laptop (which has two ports at the rear, one on top of the other), I couldn't plug anything else into the other USB port - not even a regular USB cable! The Kingston drive, of course, fixes both these issues - it's the perfect size for cramped USB ports in any situation.

On top of all that, these drives are very sexy - matte white finish with a metallic label on one side, denoting the model and size, and a plastic "Kingston" logo on the other side, which flashes when the drive is being accessed. The color scheme matches perfectly with modern computers, as well as every Apple computer on the market.

What about the technical specs? These drives are available in a range of sizes, from 128MB to 2GB. This 1GB model I purchased has an actual displayed capacity of 985MB, formatted as FAT32. Each size drive has a different colored label, to help you stay organized (if you really need more than one!).

Per a reader's comments - the drive is USB 2.0 compliant, and has been compatible with everything I've thrown at it - OS X 10.3 (iBook G3 300MHz), OS X 10.4 (PowerBook G4 1.2GHz), Windows XP, Knoppix Linux, and Ubuntu Linux. I've even used it with an old Thinkpad T30 with USB 1.1 without any issues (aside from pitifully slow file transfer speeds).

Kingston also manufactures a U3 flash drive with the same case design. U3 drives can run U3-developed applications directly from them, similar to the portable apps developed for standard thumb drives (portable firefox, portable openoffice, etc). I didn't need the U3 functionality, but the design has the same cap-retaining features.

There is one caveat about this drive, which applies to other thumb drives, as well. The ability to partition a thumb drive is governed by its chipset. This particular drive cannot be partitioned in a way that allows Windows to read both partitions. This was not an issue for me, but it may be for others.

If you need a thumb drive for work, school, or just in case, make sure you pick up a Kingston DataTraveler in the size of your choice. You won't regret it. I even found mine on Buy.com with a $12 mail-in rebate, putting the final price at only $20!