Realistically anything over 16GB is going to be too expensive to be used as a giveway and arguably anything less than 1GB is too small for a number of reasons:

• Retention and re-use: If you want the USB sticks you hand out to be retained and used (this way you get maximum brand exposure) then you need to give the user some spare storage capacity on the sticks to store and carry their own information around on. If you buy sticks with too little memory (128MB or 256MB) and you load your own data onto these before you hand them out then you’re not giving the recipient much incentive to hang onto the stick.

  (If all you want to do use the USB memory sticks to distribute information to your customers and you’re not bothered if they keep them then in these circumstances go with the smaller options).

• End of life: Very few memory chip manufacturers are still producing 1GB memory chips so any that are available tend to be re-cycled or they were chips that were originally destined to be larger capacity chips but some of the sectors failed the QA test so they will have been “downgraded” to a 1GB chip.
• Perceived value: Customers are not stupid and know when they are being given something of value so if you want to make an impact don’t give then a 128MB USB Stick – it’s not going to impress them, give them at least a 1GB stick or ideally a 2GB or 4GB – the cost differential is only pennies these days!

Ironically unless you or the people you intend giving the USB sticks to are moving large data files around the amount of storage in a 256MB or 512MB is huge. For example a typical Word document is only a few KB, likewise a simple spreadsheet, even music files (mp3’s) are only around 5MB so a hundred could fit on a 512MB USB stick! So does size really matter?

USB Memory Sizes - Upgrade Offer

The short answer is yes – buying at least 2GB USB sticks pretty much assures you are going to get good quality memory inside the stick, it’s a size that people perceive to be worth keeping and it’s the sort of product that will generate lots of affinity to any brand printed onto it. Lots of companies are currently offering free upgrades to 2GB from 1GB so shop around for the best deal.

When the day is over and all you have left are some fabulous memories (and hopefully your partner!) then it’s your photo’s that will help bring the day back to life and help you enjoy and celebrate the day all over again with your family and friends.

Tradition dictates your wedding photos are supplied in a professionally produced Album that reflects the day. Most specialist wedding photographers will have their own portfolio of Albums that you can choose from with price breaks to reflect the quality and size of the Album. But, given that most photographers now use digital cameras for their shoots and then edit the digital images after the day it’s not unusual to be offered a CD or DVD with your wedding photographs on as well (typically for an extra fee).

USB flash drives

The digital images supplied on the CD/DVD will typically be high resolution .jpg that are viewable on most PC’s and Macs. Because they are “high resolution” images each image can be quite a large file and this is one of the reasons why photographers have historically chosen CD’s and DVD’s over other products like USB flash Drives. Flash drives (whilst available with large amounts of storage) have been comparatively much more expensive than a CD and it’s been easier to get hold of CD’s and DVD’s locally and print a label for it before they hand it out to their clients.

But, things are changing:

• Storage capacities on USB flash drives are increasing all the time and a typical USB flash drive has between 4GB – 16GB of storage – more than enough to store hundreds of high quality photographs on!
• Costs are falling – only a year ago an 8GB USB flash drive would have costs around £15, today it’s less than half of this.
• Less PC’s and Macs are shipping with a CD or DVD player because the technology is now considered “old” and unfashionable.
• Data transfer speeds for USB flash drives have taken a massive step forward with the introduction of USB 3.0 (which also works with PC’s running USB 1.x and 2.0) – this means it will be quicker for photographers to load their images onto a flash drive and it’ll be faster for you to view your photos
• Professional Wedding Photographers are gradually moving towards printed USB flash drives in snazzy presentation (gift boxes) – these look so much better than a CD/DVD and they make great gifts if you wanted to order a few to hand out to friends and family. You might even think about using some of them as wedding favours (pre-loaded with images of your courtship, things about you, the hen and stag night photos etc.)

If, like lots of couples you’re looking to post your wedding photos on Social Networking sites like Facebook, Google+ and Twitter then you’ll definitely want your photos supplied digitally. If you’re going to get them supplied digitally then don’t be surprised to be offered them on a USB flash drive.

The problem with some USB memory sticks that are printed (and it tends to be metal or aluminum sticks that are the biggest culprits) is that the ink used to print them can scratch off pretty easily in daily use.

engraved USB flash drives

Popular metal USB sticks (like the twister or rotate) leave the factory with a protective “film” on them. The film is designed to provide some protection against scratching and to help keep the surface looking pristine. But, if you want to print on these metal sticks you first have to remove the protective film with a chemical wipe and then you need to prime the metal so help with the ink adhesion – if this is not done any logo printed onto the sticks will come off when scratched lightly with a finger nail.

Even when cleaned and primed the ink applied to the metal sticks “sits on the surface” of the metal and once the surface tension is broken (for example with keys on a keyring) then the ink will start to flake off. Plastic USB sticks don’t tend to suffer from the same fate because the ink “embeds” itself into the actual surface of the plastic.

If you are planning to give away metal style USB memory sticks with your logo on and you expect the sticks to take some punishment in daily usage then you might be better thinking about getting the sticks engraved. Whilst printed USB sticks do look stunning if you want your brand to survive as long as the USB lasts or is used then engraving might be a better option.

Engraving is no more expensive than printing and arguably on the right product can look more sophisticated. On metal surfaces that have an anodised colour finish applied to the surface, engraving simply etches away some of the anodised colour layer to leave a white finish (see the example images).

Engraving is also a suitable technique to brand wood, bamboo or leather USB flash drives – the finish is equally effective and durable.

If you’re not sure whether your logo would be best printed or engraved then speak to your supplier and ask for the advice and ideally get them to supply you with samples of your shortlisted drives printed and engraved. It’s fat better to make your decision(s) having seen the products in the flesh and having carried out your own “scratch tests”.

USB2U can supply printed or engraved USB flash drives in as little as 24hrs and will happily supply samples for prior to any order (the samples will be “dummy”” samples – in other words they won’t have any onboard memory but in all other respects they will be the same as the real thing!

When you stop and think about it, it does seem strange with the amount of technology most of us carry around and take into meetings that so many of us still use traditional business cards to share information about ourselves and the company we represent.  After all, most people that are given a card will simply transfer the information from the card onto their PC, their phone or iPad and then more often than not the card is discarded. It’s rare these days that people hang onto the cards and build their own business card collections. Businesses selling business card wallets and Roladex are surely living on borrowed time!

If you still want or plan to give out business cards then why not think about upgrading from a basic paper card to a USB business card. These a plastic “business card” shaped USB flash drives that can be printed (on both sides) with your company details, logo and your personal contact details – they look like a business card and at 2mm thick they’re only marginally thicker than their paper counterpart.

USB Business Cards

But, the real beauty of these USB Business Cards is that they work just like a regular flash drive and they’re available in a range of different memory sizes from 1GB all the way up to 16GB. The on-board storage (which is vast) allows you to pre-load the card with basic information like your contact details, your product catalogues, price lists, technical sheets, media file etc. In fact, anything that can be digitised can be pre-loaded onto the cards before they are handed out.

USB Business Card

Of course the recipient will still have to transfer (or digitally copy) the information from the card but because the card is likely to be a little bit different from anything they’ve been given before it will “prick their interest”, it will make you and your company more memorable. Additionally there will  be a stronger likelihood that they’ll read the information you give them and more fundamentally because there will be store space left on the card they can use for their own personal data there is a strong likelihood they will keep the card and use it regularly.

Fundamentally we think business cards are in the last throws of their life but if you are going to give them out then perhaps now is the time to switch to a USB business card.

If you’d been looking to buying 8GB promotional USB flash drives printed with your logo and pre-loaded with your company data this time two years ago then you’d have expected to pay around £15 per USB stick. A year ago the same USB sticks would have cost around £10 each but today the price (depending on the quantity ordered) has dropped to around £4- £5 per unit!

That’s a huge amount of professionally produced and printed data storage for about the cost of a large swanky coffee! Just think about how many documents, catalogues, price lists, movie files etc. you could fit onto an 8GB drive and give out or send to your customers – give them an 8GB USB drive and they’ll almost certainly keep it and use it because whatever you pre-load onto it before your hand them out and they’ll still be tons of space left for your customers or clients to load their own data onto the drive.

USB Price Falls

Unsurprisingly with these price reductions what we used to consider “larger” USB capacity sizes (4GB and 8GB) are now becoming the de facto choice for many. After all, the price differential between 1GB sticks and 8GB sticks is now only a £1 or two but the perceived value of an 8GB flash drive is still incredibly high.

A consequence of the move to larger flash memory sizes is that smaller “give-away” memory sizes of 128MB, 256MB and 512MB are getting harder to source – the simple reason for this is that very few factories (if any) are still producing memory chips of this size because it is simply not cost effective for them to do so. Effectively these small memory chips have gone “end of life” and where they are offered they are often re-cycled chips or “off-cuts” from chips that were originally destined to be larger chips.

Underpinning the price falls are a combination of seasonal price falls (late Spring and early Summer is a quiet period for the factories and pricing reflects the sluggish demand), Moore’s Law (which states that the number of transistors on a chip will double approximately every two years), and a weakening USD ($) – flash memory is priced in $’s so any weakness against the GBP (£) = lower prices.

So, when you think promotional USB flash drives don’t think cheap and cheerful 128MB sticks but think cheap and very happy 8GB sticks!

The free entry level option gives users 5GB (gigabytes) of storage. Options to increase the amount of storage (up to a maximum of 16TB) have also been launched but at the top end it’ll cost you $799.99. A more realistic 100GB of storage is available at $4.99 per month which compares favourably to Dropbox who currently charge $25 per month for a similar amount of storage.

Essentially Google Drive is a “Cloud based” storage solution that will allow users to upload and download data (files, pictures, videos, etc.) from their PC or Mac, their mobile phone or tablet. Android phones are supported from the get go and an update is expected within weeks to support iPhones.

With Google now entering the market will people still use or want portable storage options like USB Flash Drives? After all, why pay for a small USB stick that you might lose or break when you can simply upload your data safely and securely to a cloud based storage option like Google Drive. Not only that but whether you use Google, Dropbox or Microsoft you’ll expect your data to be accessible wherever you are and without any worries of it ever being lost or corrupted. With such compelling arguments why would you buy/use a USB flash drive?

Well for some people handing over their precious/sensitive data to Google and entrusting them to keep it secure is a “non-starter”. Worries of who will have access to the data, vulnerability to hacking and just general paranoia about not being able to “physically hold it” mean the solution is not going to be for everyone. But, for your average home user/student, particularly those with the latest smartphones and a Gmail accounts, an integrated Google solution is going to be a formidable option and services like these will gradually erode the use of USB flash drives in the consumer market.

Promotional USB Flash Drives

Interestingly though, sales of promotional USB flash drives have never been stronger. Companies wishing to distribute data or provide a relatively inexpensive “branded giveaway” are now using USB flash drives in preference to CD’s and DVD’s and it’s a trend that looks set to continue. Underpinning the growth is a realisation that USB sticks have a high perceived value, they’re small and portable and they look great printed. It’s also cheaper to supply electronic brochures, price lists, catalogues etc. on a branded USB flash drive than it is to get them printed and distributed.

In response manufacturers and suppliers of promotional USB flash drives are continually bringing out new products to drive the market. Recent innovations include wafer thin credit card style USB flash drives that are only 2mm thick and bamboo USB flash drives that play well in the re-cycled/environmentally conscious market.

So, whilst consumers might start to reduce their spend on portable USB flash drives (in favour of cloud based solutions) they are increasingly likely to be given USB flash drives by companies looking for a way to communicate with them in a more innovative and cost effective manner.

Increasingly in such circumstances people are using USB memory sticks printed with details of the event to achieve such a goal. Business examples include companies launching a new product, unveiling a new building, launching a new website or introducing a new product/pricing mix.

On the personal front printed USB memory sticks are frequently being used to celebrate the birth of a child, to announce an engagement and to celebrate a wedding (typically the printed USB sticks are circulated around family and friends but only after they have been loaded up with photos, video clips and music). Weddings in particular seem to be a strong area of growth for the USB stick with the happy couple now giving them away as wedding favours (pre-loaded of course with photos of the courtship, the stag and hen nights, personal mementos and pictures of the wedding) and professional wedding photographers are getting in on the act by using high quality USB sticks and packaging to differentiate their service and provide something a little bit different.

Printed USB Sticks - Weddings

Schools are not being left out either with many now using printed USB memory sticks and USB wristbands to hand out to prospective pupils and parents at open days, to help students carry their work to/from home, to raise funds for school trips and expeditions  and to generally raise the awareness of the school in the local community.

Charities are also finding printed USB memory sticks are a great way to get their message out in a format that encourages participation and donation. Rather than just sending a prospective supporter a flyer or inert Direct Mail pack by sending them a USB memory stick pre-loaded with photos, videos, Direct Debit Mandate forms and links to their web sites, their donation pages etc. they are able to communicate much more effectively and at a deeper level – unlike standard DM packs very few people will simply throw away a USB stick without first plugging it into a computer  and if you load the right data in the right format you’ll get their attention.

So, if you have a special event coming up soon and you want something a little bit different to help you mark the occasion then why not use a printed USB memory stick – you can get them today for less than £2 each (printed and pre-loaded) and if you speak to the right suppliers they can be with you in as little as 24-48hrs so if you’re one of those people that leaves everything to the last minute they are still a possibility.

Engraved USB Flash Drives

If they do any of these things with your carefully printed USB flash drives then pretty soon any printed logo on the USB stick is going to take some severe punishment and is ultimately going to succumb and start to rub/scratch off. It doesn’t matter how good the initial print job was, what time of print primer was used, whether the print is “protected” with a spot varnish of lacquer because once the surface tension of the ink is broken it will start to chip or flake away. Fact.

An alternative to printing is engraving – this is where your logo is etched (typically by a laser cutter or engraver) into the shell of the USB drive. Once the shell has been physically marked with a laser it’s done for good and it doesn’t matter what sort of punishment the sticks are exposed to after they have been engraved because the engraved logo will still be there.

Whilst you can’t engrave in colour, engraved products do look incredibly professional and ooze quality but more importantly the logo (or name/serial number) that is engraved is there for good. If you’re paying for products like USB sticks to be customised with your logo then as well as how they look the durability of the logo you print onto them has to be a key factor.

Engraving is an option on a wide range of USB memory sticks including wood (bamboo), some plastics, leather and lots of different metal and anodised metal variants. Anodised Twister USB flash drives (these are the types without a cap) are particularly popular because they come in a wide range of different colours and the engraving looks more like a fine print rather than “classic” engraving.

engraved wood USB flash drives

So, next time you are considering buying some branded USB Flash Drives don’t just automatically think about getting them printed but instead look at the options like engraving and consider if this might be a better choice for your brand, your needs and ultimately your customers (the people you are giving them to). Engraved USB flash drives are no more expensive than their printed counterparts and they take no longer to produce and supply. Some suppliers like USB2U (who hold lots of USB sticks in stock) can turn around engraved USB drives in as little as 24hrs!

If you’re not sure which option is best for you then ask for samples – these are typically free and seeing engraved Vs printed in the flesh should help you make the right choice.

Raspberry-PI

Whilst it might not be the prettiest of products it has managed to generate a huge amount of interest and demand not least amongst developers, schools, hobbyists and others keen to get their hands on a cheap, easy-to-use computer.

The organization behind the Raspberry Pi, the Raspberry Pi Foundation (a UK registered charity) describes the Pi as “a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming.”

The Pi is built around the Arm chip that is used in the vast majority of mobile phones. It runs one version of the Linux operating system and uses SD cards as its “on-board” storage medium but it comes with USB ports so you easily add additional memory using a USB flash drive or other USB connected storage.

With the price of USB flash memory plummeting at the moment you could easily add an extra 2Gb – 8GB of extra storage from just a couple of pounds!

If you’re a school and you’re planning to buy the Raspberry Pi for your students then you might also want to think about getting some USB flash drives produced with your school logo or crest on specifically for use with the Raspberry Pi.  Better still, get them produced with the students names on and the Raspberry Pi logo (with the permission of the Raspberry Pi Foundation of course) and this way they can have their own personalized USB flash drives that are specifically for use with the computers and onto which their PC work can be saved.

If you really want to challenge the students you could buy them bare bones USB connectors and get them to design and build their own Raspberry Pi Flash Drives for use with the computer – ideal for students looking to take Design Technology and IT and a great way to excite them about both disciplines.

USB2U, one of the UK leading suppliers of printed USB Flash Drives can deliver (often within as little as 24hrs) printed or engraved USB Flash Drives.

“Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation”.

Whilst lots of companies have made their catalogues available on the web many still send a paper version out in the post. Part of the reason for doing it is just to “remind” the recipient about the company, who they are and what they do. How many of these paper catalogues end up straight in the bin is debatable but a short (unscientific poll) amongst our customers suggests it’s a lot!

Paper brochures and catalogues are not cheap to design and print and if you end up posting out heavy catalogues overseas then the costs can spiral dramatically.

Wouldn’t it be better to use the content you have already digitised for the web and pre-load it onto a USB flash drive as an “electronic, interactive catalogue”? You could then post the USB flash drive to your customers rather than a paper version.

The beauty of doing this is that not only will it be cheaper to produce but, the USB flash drive can be printed with your company logo and posted for the price of a 1^st Class Large Letter stamp!

Your catalogue can be “locked” on the flash drive so it can’t just be deleted but it’s a good idea to use a flash drive that offers a little bit of extra space for the recipient to store their own personal data – this way there’s a strong chance that the flash drive will get lots of repeat usage and your brand will get lots of exposure.

There are lots of different styles of flash drives to choose from so there is bound to be something that fits with your corporate style/image but if there’s not you could always commission your very own unique shape – a growing number of companies are getting their flash drives manufactured to look like a particular product they sell or in some cases in the shape of the company logo. These custom USB drives are real attention grabbers and a great way to circulate your brochure, price lists and media files.

So next time someone in your marketing department mentions a re-print of your corporate brochure or product catalogue it might be worth mentioning the option of a catalogue on a USB flash drive.