Written on August 8, 2008 – 8:47 am | by Bogdan Alex |
I’m no fan of USB memory sticks, but seeing that these minidrives get smaller by the day while their capacity gets larger, I just might buy one of these just in case. I don’t usually dig cute small things, but in case of a memory stick I could make an exception. What do we have on the market that would fit in the small form-factor category? Super Talent has the Pico USB waterproof sticks… not bad. What about the new Imation Atom series? These two series seem to be the tiniest.

The 8GB ‘Atom Flash Drive’ from Imation measures only 32 x 12 x 4.8mm and it’s pretty much similar in size to the Super Talent Pico and its 31.3 x 12.4 x 3.4mm dimensions. Actually, the Pico is 50 per cent lighter at 6g, but I guess nobody would be bothered by a surplus of 3g.

Unlike the Pico, Atom comes with integrated password protection and drive partitioning capabilities. Additionally, the drive is Vista ReadyBoost compatible so it should be pretty fast, even though Imation hasn’t disclosed the actual data rates as of yet.

Other features for the Atom Flash Drive are a five year limited warranty, driverless Windows, Mac and Linux support and a price expected to be around the £20 mark.