A Closer Look:

Retail Front

Retail rear

    Each flash drive comes packaged in a small blister pack with all four sides heat sealed. UGH!! Even so, this blister pack is fairly easy to open by just cutting up one side of the package and reaching inside to rip out the product.

Kingston Logo

2GB version

Cap removed

Instruction/Lanyard

    I'm going to kick off the review with the DataTraveler Reader. This model is the 2 GB version. This little multipurpose device measures in at 29.5mm x 67.6mm x 11.3mm, and has a built-in card reader for SD, SDHC, MMC, MMCplus, miniSD*, microSD*, RS-MMC*, MMCmobile*, MMCmicro*. The little stars indicate a special adapter is needed for those cards to work in the DataTraveler Reader, and those adapters usually come with the media cards. The main body of the DataTraveler Reader is black with Kingston written on one side and DataTraveler Reader 2 GB silk screened on the other. To use the card reader feature, the back half of the DataTraveler Reader lifts open (it is hinged near the USB connection,) and then the slot for the media card is visible. Simply slide the media into the slot, close the lid, and insert the DataTraveler Reader into a free USB port on the computer. A green LED flashes to the beat of the data flow.

Snap tight	Side View	Front View
Up Close	FEED ME!	Card installed

    I was curious about how the DataTraveler Reader worked with a card in the reader. Would it combine the information together into one drive? Or would it disable the 2GB portion of the DataTraveler Reader and work from the installed media card only? When used by itself, it shows up as a single 2GB drive in Windows, and to my surprise when a media card is inserted, two separate drives show up in Windows. Now, that is a nice option to have when you need to transfer data from the media card to the flash drive.

    Next up is the DataTraveler ReadyFlash, which is enhanced for Windows ReadyBoost. So for us non-Vista users: what is ReadyBoost? The answer is up next.

Getting Started with Windows ReadyBoost ™
    ReadyBoost™ is a Microsoft Windows Vista™ feature, which may improve system performance by allowing a compatible USB drive to be configured with a ReadyBoost™ cache. This feature can improve performance in low-memory situations and it is especially useful on systems with limited memory expansion capabilities. Once the ReadyBoost™ cache has been configured on a compatible USB drive, it will be automatically enabled each time the drive is reinserted or the system is restarted. Windows ReadyBoost™ allows for unused areas of the drive to be used for storage.

Kingston logo

1GB version

Cap removed

Instructions/Lanyard

    So now that we have the question answered, let's go over the actual flash drive. This particular model is the 1GB version with a silver case, and only measures a mere 67.7mm x 20.8mm x 9.0mm in size. A blue LED flashes to let you know that the data is flowing. The sides have ridges on them so the chip doesn't break off in the French Onion dip - err, wrong chip - I mean to better help grasp the flash drive when removing it from the USB port.