Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The best thing USB flash drives have going for them is their price, which has been in a free fall for several years and about to go below $1 per GB at the time I'm writing this review. In addition, if your goal is storing data independently of any specific piece of equipment - camera, reader, music player - their size/bulk is an advantage because it's so much easier to lose or break an SD card once it's out of its host. Briefly, this is what it's worth knowing about this item: - I can't see that I've had a big problem with losing caps but the 'capless' design is quite innovative and it does not hurt. - It's fast enough to support video transfer but, of course, it does not come close to the theoretical 60MB/sec max I/O speed that the USB 2.0 specification allows. - Installs itself and does not require any software to be recognized as a 'drive' on a Vista or XP computer. Can't speak for other operating systems. - It formats and partitions as any 'spinning' drive. - Can be used to store data, to attach to players (my car plays MP3s off an USB drive) or to move it between unconnected devices. - Tolerable when used with apps that require some moderate I/O but I would not try to make it a swap drive. When it comes to Kingston - and, over the years and as prices were falling and the capacity grew, I've bought their 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and now the 16GBs - they never let me down. I don't believe I've lost one bit of data so far and, affordable as they are, I can make multiple copy of the data I can't afford to lose and keep it stored at different locations. Considering price and reliability, this is a well-deserved 5-star.