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Posts Tagged ‘metal’

New Mini Twister USB Flash Drive Set to Make A Big Impact

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

Don’t be put off by its size because the new Mini Twister USB Flash Drive packs a huge punch in terms of impact and quality. At just over 3cm in length its about half the size of most “standard” USB flash drives but it’s still capable of supporting up to 16GB of data in what is arguably one of the most elegant designs we’ve seen in a while.

Mini USB Twister - Engraved

Mini USB Twister - Engraved

The outer case/clip of the Mini Twister (the bit that rotates to protect the USB connector) is made from a relatively thick, heavy and highly polished metal that takes engraving really well. The combination of the size of the drive, the design and the high quality finish of the product is likely to see this drive emerge as a firm favourite.

It’s too early to tell if the new “Mini Twister” will challenge the Classic Twister USB Flash Drive. The Classic model has

Classic and Mini Twister

Classic and Mini Twister

been around for almost a decade now and to this day remains the number one best selling promotional USB flash drive by some margin accounting for well over half of all promotional flash drives sold into the promotional and corporate sector. The reasons for the Twisters success are:

  • It has no removable cap to lose – the outer “clip” rotates (or twists, hence the name) around the body of the drive to protect the USB connector.
  • It’s available in a wide range of body colours and the body colour can be pantone matched if the standard colours are not suitable. Some companies and schools will order a their USB twisters in a range of different colours so they can supply different departments or school years with a particular colour.
  • Because they are so popular they’re manufactured in huge volumes and this keeps the cost relatively low. Typically the classic Twister USB flash drive will be the cheapest model available from most suppliers although you may have to pay a little more if you want them produced in your own colour (pantone matched body shell).
  • Keyring and lanyards are easy to attach to the Twister Classic and compliment the drive really well.
  • If you over order the Twister or you want to change the branding/image printed on them then its relatively easy to remove the clip and replace it with a new clip printed with new artwork – this way you’re only paying for the cost of a replacement clip and not the memory (the bit that costs the money)
  • It’s light, relatively small and really easy to use.

The mini Twister USB drive has many of the attributes of the “Classic” version but in a smaller, neater package (albeit it does not have the colour range) so it will be interesting to see how much of the market it can take from the larger, older version.

If you’d like a sample of the new Mini Twister just give us a call and we’ll pop one in the post to you.

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New Mini Twister USB Flash Drive Set to Make A Big Impact

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Clip On USB Flash Drives That Are Hard To Shake Off

Friday, July 22nd, 2011

Lots of schools and companies are buying USB flash drives to hand out to the students, to promote their business or to develop their brand. Whatever your reasons for buying them you want them to be functional (to work as a USB flash drive) but you also need them to reflect your school or company’s brand values. Choosing the right style of USB flash drive for your project can be daunting!

Examples of the Clip USB Flash Drive

Examples of the Clip USB Flash Drive

There are loads of different styles, colours and shapes of USB flash drive on the market today and most are easily customised (printed or engraved). Most are manufactured from plastic, some from metal and a smaller number from wood (bamboo) or PVC. Some have a cap, others “rotate” or “swivel” to protect the USB connector, some come with a lanyard or key ring attachment and others are secured by slipping them onto your wrist (USB wristbands) or clipping them onto your pocket (USB pens).

Just to make the decision process more interesting/challenging there are lots of new models of USB Flash Drives entering the market weekly and one that has already attracted lots of interest is the USB Clip. This is a small, tactile, metal USB flash drive that, as the name implies “clips” onto to work folder, a pocket, or a physical DM mailer pack.

Clip Drive - Shirt Pocket

Clip Drive - Shirt Pocket

The Clip Drive is only 38mm long and at 12mm wide it’s as small as you can go with a USB flash drive because the whole thing is the width of a standard USB connector.

These Clip Drives are typically engraved but they can be printed if preferred albeit engraving tends to be a bit more resilient to the everyday knocks and bumps there drive get in daily use.

Despite their small form factor they are available in all the standard memory sizes from 512MB all the way up to 16GB. Whatever size you buy make sure you take full advantage of the memory and storage space you are paying for by pre-loading your own sales material, brochures or PowerPoint slides on them before you hand them out. Most schools and companies are doing this now not least because any savings you can make by not printing these documents can help towards offsetting the cost of buying the USB flash drives.

If you’re interested in the Clip Drive then pop onto our web site and fill out the on-line quote form or just give our sales team a call on our Freephone number. Send us your artwork and we’ll even mock up various versions for you free of charge!

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Clip On USB Flash Drives That Are Hard To Shake Off

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Bullet Proof USB Flash Drives – Ideal For Students

Thursday, June 16th, 2011

We’re often asked by Schools and Universities to recommend a USB flash drive that can withstand the rigours of daily use (and abuse) by their students. It’s not unusual for these institutions to buy thousands of flash drives each year for their annual intake and either provide them free of charge as part of their “joining pack” or to sell them via the school or university shop.

Whether they are being given away or sold these flash drive have to have several key characteristics:

  1. They have to be reliable and work every time they are used – good quality grade flash memory chip should be used to ensure the flash drives have a reasonable life and won’t fail in the first few months of use. For a student there would be nothing worse than saving a dissertation onto a flash drive only to find that it failed when you needed to retrieve the file.
  2. Ideally the flash drives need to be reasonably fast – standard promotional USB flash drive have a typical read/write speed of around 2 – 4MB per second. Student will appreciate faster read/write speeds, which means specifying better quality flash memory components, and faster controller chips when you buy the flash drives.
  3. They need to be physically robust – reliability and speed are of course important but given the punishment these flash drives take in the hands of students it’s critical that a strong, robust model is chosen. There are lots of plastic or metal and plastic models around and whilst these are popular with businesses to support their sales and marketing activities they are not the ideal option for students. Our recommendation is something like the metal Capsule USB flash drive.
Metal Capsule USB Flash Drives

Metal Capsule USB Flash Drives

The Metal Capsule Drive is an excellent choice for students because:

  1. It’s manufactured from tough, lightweight steel but it has no square or sharp edges. As such its safe to handle and incredibly stong.
  2. It can be attached to a keyring or bag easily and quickly
  3. The cap screws on so whilst it does have a cap (and of course caps can be lost) the cap, once on won’t accidentally come off and it provide a good level of protection to the USB connector.
  4. There’s a rubber seal between the body of the drive and the cap so when the cap is screwed on the drive becomes watertight and will withstand the occasional wash in a washing machine
  5. They look pretty cool and are the sort of flash drives that will appeal to students.

If you’re interested in getting a price for the Capsule USB Flash drive then give us a call on 0800 008 7079 or fill in the online quote request form and we’ll get back to you in a flash!

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Bullet Proof USB Flash Drives – Ideal For Students

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USB Keys – Attach Them To Your Keyring

Friday, July 9th, 2010

Promotional and Branded USB Flash Drives are excellent tools to advertise and promote your business. They’re popular with recipients, they have a high perceived value, they’re small and portable and they look fantastic with a company logo printed or engraved on them.

USB flash drives are also a cost effective way for to distribute sales material, product brochures, price lists, presentation files and media files. Simply pre-load your branded USB flash drives with this data before they are distributed and you save on the printing costs and any associated transportation costs of getting your sales material to shows and events. By comparison the transportation costs of USB flash drives is tiny and these saving often more than offset the purchase cost of the USB sticks.

When choosing a USB flash drive there are a number of key things to consider including:

  • Memory Size – make sure you not only buy a USB memory stick with sufficient memory to accommodate any data you want to pre-load onto the sticks but also make sure there is enough memory available for the recipient to want to use the stick. Too little memory and they’ll never be used and you won’t be any brand exposure/loyalty benefits, too much and you may end up paying more than you wanted.
  • Quality – don’t be lured into buying cheap branded flash drives. If the prices you are being quoted by one supplier seem much cheaper than the other quotes you have been given then its possible that you are being quoted for Grade “B” recycled flash chips. These are typically salvaged chips that will have a high failure rate and will typically suffer from performance issues. Always check with your supplier what Grade and brand of flash memory chip and controller is being supplied.
  • Which Model – there are literally hundreds of different types of USB flash drive available today. They come in all
    USB Key Flash Drive

    USB Key Flash Drive

    shapes and sizes and in a range of standard colours. Typical materials used to manufacture them include; plastic, metal, wood, leather, bamboo or any combination of these. If you can’t find a model to suit your needs then don’t despair because its now very easy to get fully customised flash drives built to your own specification – you just need to allow a little more time to get them designed, manufactured and printed.

  • Portability – most flash drives are relatively small (around 5cm x 2cm) and most come with some way of attaching a keyring or lanyard to them. One of the more recent innovations is the availability of a Key Shaped USB Flash drive. These USB keys are manufactured from metal, they are the same size as a conventional key, they are extremely durable and they fit, as you would expect, on a keyring just like any key. As such the USB Key is probably the most portable of all flash drives and certainly one of the most robust.

Whichever USB flash drive you choose you can be confident that it will money well spent because in terms of promoting your company there are few more popular products around today.

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USB Keys – Attach Them To Your Keyring

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