Victorinox "Swiss Army" USB Flash Drives
I have owned a Victorinox USB flash drive for several years now - long enough that it is only a 512MB unit, and it was considered "typical" at the time that I got it. I recently decided it was time to get a new one with a capacity more typical by today's standards. My basic selection criteria was very simple - besides the capacity, it must not have any knife or scissors which would cause me problems when taking it in my backpack on commercial flights.
The Victorinox Flash web page lists all of the various models available today. The one I want is the Victorinox Flash Flight series, nothing but a USB stick, ball point pen and LED lamp - or perhaps the Victorinox Flash Flight Laser series, with a laser pointer instead of the LED lamp:
Available memory capacities depend on how up to date (or out of date) the store is; the absolute newest are 32 GB, but those don't seem to be very widely available yet, while at the other end of the spectrum, you might still be able to find a few places with 2 GB units in stock.
Victorinox has always been very innovative about adding new and different things to all of their Swiss Army Knives, and the USB Flash models are no exception. The current eye-catcher is the Secure series, which incorporate a fingerprint reader in the USB stick, and secure the data stored on the stick with either a fingerprint or password access control. I wasn't interested in this model because the associated sofware only works with Windows. I have also seen a couple of articles and reviews which say that the fingerprint reader also incorporates a thermal sensor, so that a "copy" of a fingerprint (or a detatched finger.... ugh) won't work, but I can't find any specific information about that on the Victorinox web page. Here is a picture of the Secure model, with knife and scissors included - it is also available in a "Secure Flight" model, without the pointed objects.
At the top of the "gadget" pile is the Presentation Master series. It includes the laser pointer and fingerprint reader and ... wait for it ... Bluetooth connectivity and two mouse buttons, so you can control Forward/Backward functions of a presentation! Sorry, no mouse movement, yet...
Like I said, they have always been good at adding interesting and useful new gadgets, and they still are. You should see some of the "Swiss Army Golf Knives"!
Anyway, I now have my 16GB Flight-Safe Swiss Army USB Flash drive, and I have already copied onto it the ISO files of all the latest Linux distributions that I use. Good stuff!
jw 21/7/2010
P.S. One other very nice feature that I forgot to mention. The USB stick itself can be easily detached from the knife body, allowing it to fit in some very tight places and closely spaced USB ports where many other USB drives will not.
