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Posts Tagged ‘schools’

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Personalise Every USB Memory Stick You Give out

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

Printing a logo on USB flash drives is relatively straightforward these days and there are lots of different USB flash drives to choose from. In fact, there is so much choice these days that one of the biggest challenges people face when buying USB memory sticks is deciding which particular model or style is right for their business, school or university.

The benefits of handing out promotional USB sticks to help drive brand awareness, to increase sales or simply to give the recipients’ a means of storing and carrying data are well documented.  To a large extent USB sticks have now replaced CD’s and DVD’s as the de facto storage option of choice.

Their popularity has been underpinned by dramatic price falls over the past few years coupled with the availability of much larger memory sizes. A few years ago the typical memory size of a giveaway or promotional USB flash drive was around 128MB, today the most popular size is 2GB and by the end of this year it’s expected to be 4GB.

Personalised USB Flash Drives

Personalised USB Flash Drives

Most USB memory sticks that are given out are printed with a single design or brand on them (or in the case of schools and universities it tends to be the school crest or logo). This is fine in most circumstances but sometimes it would be beneficial for every USB stick to be personalised; perhaps with a name or serial number for example.

It makes sense if you’re buying USB flash drives for a school class or perhaps an entire school to add the students name to the logo that is printed – perhaps on the reverse of the USB stick or if there is room adjacent to the logo. This way it’s much easier to identify who owns the sticks should any of them get lost or misplaced (and inevitability with school students)

The challenge if you want a different name or image printed on every USB stick you order is find a supplier that is able to do it and do it for a reasonable price. Most suppliers charge a set-up and print fee for every design they print which could potentially mean 30 different set-up and print charges for a class of 30 students (assuming you had each student’s name printed on every stick)!!

The reason for the charge is because  USB sticks are typically screen printed and a new “screen” would have to be made for every name change but, if you can find a supplier that uses the latest digital printing techniques it should be possible to change the graphics on every USB stick for little or no extra cost.

USB2U is one of the few suppliers of promotional USB memory sticks that can only offer a truly personalised printing option for some of their core products and if you get your order in early enough (and they have the stock to hand) then they can turn around orders in just 24hrs!

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Personalise Every USB Memory Stick You Give out

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Raising Money With Printed USB Memory Sticks

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

If you’ve committed to help raise money for a charity, your local church, school or perhaps in a moment of weakness you agreed to help your son or daughter raise money towards the cost of their World Challenge trip then you’ll quickly learn that the one of the biggest challenges is coming up with a money raising idea!

Printed UBS memory sticks might not be the obvious choice but they’re actually a brilliant way to raise funds because you can get them printed up with your fundraising details and sell them for a profit – if you buy a reasonable number (say 100+) you should easily be able to make at least £1 – £2 per USB stick you sell without too much effort.

Twister USB Flash Drives

Twister USB Flash Drives

It’s a good idea to pre-load any charity or fund raising USB drives with details of where the money raised will be going and how it will be used. Think about pre-loading video clips, press articles, You Tube videos or links to blogs/websites about the charity or activity. Don’t forget to include details of how to order more USB sticks and most importantly include a link to an on-line donation page at one of the many sites like www.justgiving.com

If the prospect of copying all of this information onto every USB stick you buy puts you off then don’t worry because most suppliers of printed USB flash drives will copy data onto the sticks for you before they send them to you. In most cases (up to a certain limit) they’ll even load the data for free so getting them to load the data for you won’t eat into any of the money you raise.

USB Wristband Flash Drives

USB Wristband Flash Drives

For schools and school trip fundraising (like World Challenge) the USB flash drives that are most popular are USB wristbands – these come in a range of vibrant colours and understandably appeal to students. If wristbands aren’t you’re thing then don’t worry there are hundreds of different styles and designs to choose from so there’s bound to be something that works for you and more importantly will appeal to whoever you’re planning to sell them to!

There’s a misconception that to buy printed USB sticks that you need to pre-order them weeks or months in advance and that you have to buy thousands of them. The reality is that most are delivered within 10 days of being ordered and the minimum order quantity is only 25 pieces. Ideally you need to be ordering at least 50-100 pcs simply because this brings the unit cost down to a level where you’ll get more profit from your sales. If you only order 25 then several fixed costs (freight, print, and set-up) have a detrimental impact on the unit price.

So, if you don’t fancy marathon car washing sessions, a sponsored run or car boot sales then give branded USB sticks a go.

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Raising Money With Printed USB Memory Sticks

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DeadDrop Offline File Sharing: A Creative Use for PCB’s

Thursday, August 18th, 2011

Along with our range of branded USB flash drives we also make custom USB flash drives. Everything about theses memory sticks is customisable from the storage size of the memory chip to the shape and colours of the casing.  We have made some really cool custom USB flash drives for companies like Nike, Silk Cut, Tampax and Orange to name a few.  However if you fancy doing this yourselves we also sell the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) that make up the memory of the custom USB memory sticks.  You might be wondering why we think that companies would want to buy the PCB’s and make 100 or 200 of their own USB cases.  Well, we don’t.

Printed Circuit Board (PCB)

The idea behind selling the PCB’s is that many schools use them as Design Technology projects for their students.  At the beginning of the project they will be given a PCB and the challenge to come up with a creative case to hold the memory chip.  This is a great way to help develop the students creativity and give them a useful data storage device at the end of it.  We have recently come across another use for the PCB’s.

A very interesting use for PCB’s is DeadDrops, a growing, offline, peer-to-peer file sharing movement.  DeadDrops involves securing a USB memory chip in a discrete public place stored with some files that you want to share.  The PCB’s are usually put in wall using cement – they need to be secured quite tightly.  A wall is not the most comfortable place to access the USB drive, the DeadDrops site has a lot of images and videos with people using their laptops, quite uncomfortably whilst holding them next to the wall.  The location of the PCB can then be uploaded to the DeadDrops blog and people can visit the street of the DeadDrop and try to find the USB.  Files can then be downloaded and uploaded onto the flash drive making it an off-line file sharing system.

Rabbit PCB USB Example

Finding a random USB flash drive cemented into the wall does seem like quite an interesting discovery and it would be interesting to hook your laptop up to it to find out what was stored on there.  Although a cool concept, it is quite pointless, but it does seem to have attracted a cool community of followers.  The DeadDrops blog also shows a video of people loading some data onto a USB flash drive attached to some balloons and letting it loose into the sky.  No doubt the idea is that someone will find this, open the files on the drive, find out what it is about and be expected to release the USB back into the sky for someone else to find.

We don’t condone damaging public property for placing USB’s but DeadDrops is certainly a creative use for PCB’s and we think that many pupils can come up with cases and applications just as imaginative.  PCB’s can be supplied in any memory size from 64MB up to 16GB.  To find out more visit our PCB product page and our Branded Memory Sticks for Schools and University’s Page.  If you would much prefer that we used our creativity to develop a custom USB memory stick to give to customers then get in touch.

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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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Personalised USB Sticks Make Great School Leaving Gifts

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

Whether you’re leaving primary school to join the “big” school or leaving secondary school to start life at university it’s going to be emotional particularly if you’re leaving behind friends you’ve formed a strong bond with over the years you’ve been together.

It’s often just as tough on the teachers, particularly in smaller schools where they may have taught the same class of children for several years. The last day will often end in tears for the teachers as they dismiss their class for the last time and inevitably it will be a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows for the students as the reality of the “last day” sinks in. No matter how hard nosed you are or how much you convince yourself it doesn’t matter the last day at school will put you through the emotional mixer.

School USB Flash Drives

School USB Flash Drives

With the rise of social networking applications like Facebook and Twitter it’s now much easier than it was to keep in touch with your school friends as you move on to a new school or to start a new life outside of school but, it’s also nice to be able to celebrate your time at the school with some form of tangible gift.

Some schools and classes have latched onto the idea of personalised USB flash drives as the perfect leaving or

School USB wristbands

School USB wristbands

graduation gift. The flash drives can be printed or engraved with the school crest or name and details of the “Class of 2011” or anything that is appropriate. They can even be individually engraved with each student’s name!

The really clever bit (but it needs someone to organise it) is to gather lots of photographs and video clips (school trips, school plays, concerts etc.) of the class together with the class register, sports achievements, school awards etc. and get all of this pre-loaded onto the USB flash drives before they are given out.

As pretty much everyone has a PC these days, personalised USB flash drives crammed full with “memories” of the good times at school are a great idea. They’re not that expensive either and the lead-time to get them produced is only around 7-10 days (but allow a little more time if you want a name engraved or printed on each one).

So, if you are looking for a leaving gift with a difference then you might want to think about personalised USB flash drives.

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USB Flash Drives For Schools – Instant Credit and Discounted Prices

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011

If you’re looking for a supplier of USB flash drives for your school and you’re not already buying them from USB2U then a detention or 100 lines of “I must buy my USB flash drives from USB2U” might be in order!

At USB2U we’ve been supplying printed and fully customised USB flash drives to schools and universities since 2002

School USB Flash Drives

School USB Flash Drives

and whilst no one likes a “show-off” we are delighted to have been chosen as the supplier of choice to so many of the UK’s leading education establishments.

We believe the reason we’re chosen is because of our commitment to providing a product and service that exceeds expectations at a price that our competitors simply cannot match. We do this without any compromise on the quality of the USB flash drives or the quality of the design and print. We only use brand new Grade A memory chips and we have rigorous quality checks in place throughout the manufacturing process and a final QA check before the flash drives leave our warehouse.

The bottom line is we want you to be happy with the USB flash drives we supply because we’d like you to come back and buy them from us year after year – we go the extra mile to make sure we not only give you the best possible terms but you also get the best product we can supply.

Our standard offer to schools and universities includes:

FREE Credit Terms – no checks, no forms, no fuss, we offer 30 day terms to all schools including Young Enterprise Groups within schools.

FREE Delivery – if you’re on the UK mainland we will ship out your order of USB flash drives at no extra cost – we use UPS overnight service to give your peace of mind.

School USB Memory Sticks

School USB Memory Sticks

FREE Data Loading – if you want to pre-load the USB flash drives with say a copy of the school prospectus, application forms, OFSTED reports or anything else we’ll happily do this (max free load is 100MB)

FREE Lanyards or Keyrings – order over 100 pieces and we’ll throw in a plain lanyard or a keyring attachment for every flash drive.

FREE Design Support – our in-house designers works with our school and university clients to prepare mock-ups, re-draw artwork, set up the supplied artwork and assist in whatever way they can to ensure the flash drives create a real “wow” when they arrive.

FREE Samples – we supply sample Flash Drives (dummy samples) so that you can check the build quality and dimensions etc. before you order.

Best Prices for USB Flash Drives – we offer significantly discounted terms to all schools and universities irrespective of the quantity ordered.

Convinced? We hope so. If you’d like a quote then just call us on our Freefone number (0800 008 7079) or fill in the quote request form on our web site and one of our team will get back to you in a flash!

USB Flash Drives for Schools

USB Flash Drives for Schools

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USB Flash Drives For Schools – Instant Credit and Discounted Prices

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USB Flash Drives Given At School Awards Ceremony

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

USB flash drives have long been popular with schools and universities. Their primary use has been to allow the teachers and students transfer work between home and school in a convenient and portable way. Typically the USB flash drives will be printed with the school logo or crest and either given to the staff and pupils or made available for purchase from the school shop.

There are a number of other innovative ways USB flash drives are being used by schools including:

High Achievers Awards Ceremony – In this case the drives were printed with the school crest and details of the awards ceremony and an electronic version of the award was pre-loaded onto the USB drive before it was given out to the students at the awards evening. The leather USB drives looked fantastic and were incredibly well received by the students.

USB Schools

USB Schools

Recruitment Tool For Intake Events – It’s not unusual for Universities to use USB flash drives at events like Freshers Fairs to equip the prospective students with electronic copies of the available courses, entrance criteria, application procedures and so on. What has been less popular but is on the increase is the use of USB flash drives by schools (particularly independent schools) to inform and “sell” the school to parents of prospective pupils.

The schools have found that USB memory sticks are a professional and handy way to put all of the information about the school, its intake procedures, copies of OFSTEAD reports, performance tables etc. in one place and in many cases its actually cheaper for the school than printing all of these documents.

Design Technology Projects – One of the challenges of Design Technology (DT) for the teachers is to engage the students and get them interested in thinking about, designing and building their own product(s). Designing and then building a custom USB flash drive is a project that is likely to excite students and it’s relatively easy to provide them with the core material needed and a framework within which they can work.

USB PCB

USB PCB

The USB connector, the flash memory and the controller chip all come as a single component which just need a housing placed around it. So, the challenge for the students is to come up with an innovative case design for their USB flash drives and then to think about the packaging and marketing that will support its sale.

As USB flash drives ease themselves more and more into our every day lives the uses they are put to within schools and universities is bound to increase.

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USB Flash Drives Given At School Awards Ceremony

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Back To School With Branded USB Memory Sticks

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

With the nights drawing in, schools have reopened for the start of a new academic year. With this, comes a growing trend for schools to offer branded USB memory sticks to pupils and staff alike.

So why should schools consider Branded USB Memory sticks and how can they get best ‘bang for buck’ when procuring them?

The more progressive schools understand that USB Memory sticks are an ideal vehicle to allow pupils and staff to store and transport information at school and between home and school, make changes / mark and upload to the school network.

However, there are some additional benefits that may be more subtle, but equally as important.

  • Reducing the cost of printing and transporting paper, so its environmentally friendly.
  • Pupils can back up coursework that they complete at home or at school as a safety net.
  • The USB Memory sticks can be branded with the school logo to add greater affinity with the school.
  • Passwords can be added to the Customised Memory sticks so if the data is sensitive it can be made secure.
  • Data can be loaded and protected on the Branded USB Memory sticks. So the school could consider providing all the standard school docs, e.g. school term dates, policies, link to web sites etc.
  • A unique serial number can be printed to the side of the Branded USB Memory stick to allow any lost memory sticks to be easily reunited with their owner.
  • A strip can also be added to the Branded USB Memory stick so users can add their names.
Branded Memory Sticks

Branded Memory Sticks

With the current scrutiny of school budgets and horror stories in the media of poor procurement from schools / LEAs, what should you consider when purchasing Branded USB memory sticks.

  • Try to obtain three quotes from established UK suppliers
  • Ensure that you are offered a line of credit, you should not ne required to make any upfront payments.
  • A free sample of the proposed USB Memory stick should be requested.
  • Ensure that the chips in the Branded Memory sticks are new and not recycled or reconditioned.
  • Consider contacting other local schools and purchasing a larger order with different logos, as economies of scale would definitely drive the price down.
  • Explore getting a local company to sponsor the production of the memory sticks and in return you can add their logo / contact details to the back.
  • Parents may be willing to make a contribution to the Custom Memory Stick so they can become cost neutral.

The benefits of Branded USB Memory sticks combined with pupils appetite for new technology has lead to many leading schools embracing USB Memory Sticks as an essential tool for learning.

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Back To School With Branded USB Memory Sticks

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