Best PC Gadget

One of the neatest products that I rapidly adopted is the now ubiquitous miniature USB drive. These little devices are useful gadgets for moving and storing vast amounts of data quickly between computers and other USB-reading devices. About the size of a small “AA” battery, the latest models provide up to a GB of storage. As with other solid-state memory devices, these drives can be erased and reused thousands of times.

My current favorite is the Verbatim “Store ‘n’ Go” USB Drive. It is reputed to be one of the industry’s fastest, and one of the first able to work with devices using the older, slower, original USB 1.1 standard, as well as the most recent version of USB technology (aptly named “USB 2.0”), which is blazingly fast compared to its USB version 1.1 predecessors.

The Verbatim “Store ‘n’ Go” drives support up to 8 MB per second read speed and 5 MB per second write speed with a full one gig of data capacity. This is a huge improvement and is greatly appreciated when transferring larger photo and MP3 files. Prices start at $28 for 32 MB; www.verbatim.com