Introduction

The name Toshiba conjures the image of a large Japanese conglomerate that produces loads of high-tech gadgets and appliances. Closer to the computing industry, Toshiba is noted for their high quality (and expensive!) notebooks.

Certainly, no one expects them to be truly active in the cheap memory products like flash memory drives. But that is exactly what they have been doing so far. Toshiba has a large range of flash memory products in the market! Evidently, no market is too small for them.

Toshiba's Pocket Media products cover three main categories :

• SD Cards
• USB Flash Memory Drives
• CompactFlash Cards

The product we are looking at today comes from their main range of USB flash memory cards - the new TransMemory USB flash memory drives.

There are actually two different TransMemory lines of products. The original TransMemory drives have model numbers starting with U2A and are black in colour. They are available in capacities of up to 512MB and cannot support Toshiba's security software.

The latest TransMemory drives have model numbers starting with U2B and are white in colour. They are also available in larger capacities, up to 1GB currently. Unlike the older TransMemory drives, these new drives support Toshiba's security software.

Today, we are going to take a close look at one of the new Toshiba TransMemory drives - the Toshiba 512MB TransMemory USB flash memory drive!

Packaging

Like most flash memory drives, the Toshiba 512MB TransMemory drive came in a plastic see-through retail package. In the front, you can clearly see the slim drive. Looks pretty cool too.

At the back of the package, you can take a look at the drive's specifications. You can also see that it was made in China.

It was a totally sealed, airtight package which provides great protection against moisture and petty theft but no protection against direct trauma for the drive itself. As always, such packages will require the use of a pocket knife or scissors to open, and are not reusable.

Contents

Inside the package, you will find the following items :

• One Toshiba 512MB TransMemory flash memory drive
• One USB extension cable
• One lanyard
• One driver CD
• One manual
• Two index labels