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06 SEPT 2004 |
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DiskGo USB Steel Watch Dress Style |
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USB flash drives are
incredibly small devices which contain
flash memory to allow you store
information such as pictures, music,
documents, and even videos. These tiny
flash drives have even reached the
capacity of 1GB so it can be easy
to forget to bring it with you or even
lose one.
Today, I will be reviewing a
product that attempts to integrate the
capabilities of USB flash drive with a
watch. Although there is also another
version, this watch is
specifically meant for more formal
occasions hence called the steel dress
style. Although the watch provided for
review is only 32MB, we can still have a
look at the performance of the flash
drive integrated in the watch. |
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The watch came in a black
box with the DiskGo! name at the front.
Included with the watch is a single page
instruction sheet, the USB connector, and the
watch itself. At one end of the USB connector
is a standard-sized USB plug. the other end has
a much smaller USB plug which will plug into the
watch. The USB connector is extremely small to
fit in your pocket, but when in use, the
connector can extend to a length of several feet
to accommodate it for the USB plug on your
computer.
The watch itself looks elegant, yet
professional. Although this is certainly not a
Rolex watch, it does have an expensive look.
The wrist band of the watch is made of stainless
steel. When wearing the watch, you just close
up the clasp on the watch to secure the watch
onto your wrist. The face of the watch looks
good. The dial of the watch is surrounded by
polished stainless steel which has numbers
indicating the number of minutes within the
hour. The dial of the watch is white and
contains the usual functions you'd expect on a
decent watch. There is the usual second,
minute, and hour hands. In addition, there is
the date towards the right of the dial. The
crown on the right side of the watch allows you
to change the time and date accordingly.
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According to the instruction sheet, this watch
is compatible with Windows, MAC, and Linux. In
order to use the USB flash drive, you just plug
one end of the connector to your computer, and
the other end to the watch. If you are using a
modern operating system like Windows XP, 2000,
etc, it should be able to detect the drive
automatically. If you are using an older
operating system such as Windows 98, it is
necessary to download drivers from the DiskGo!
company website. You are ready to go after
this.
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Although
this product is both a watch and
a flash drive, we are now going
to focus on the performance of
the flash drive. The reason we
do this is so you can have a
relative idea oh how well it
stands against regular flash
drives.
First, I
started off with my usual first
test with the use of Sisoft
Sandra Professional. I used the
Removable Storage/Flash
Benchmark. From the results, I
can conclude that it performed
on par with other USB 2.0 flash
drives such as the Sony Micro
Vault and Lexar JumpDrive. In
fact, the performance curve was
nearly the same as those
drives. Keep in mind that
Sisoft is synthetic benchmark
and should only be used as
general idea of the performance.
Next, we
move onto more real world
tests. I used the HDTach
program to test the sequential
read and random access times of
the drive. The drive performed
at a less than average 0.8MB/s.
In order to verify this, I
transferred a 5MB MP3 file to
the watch in approximately 6
seconds. If you do the math,
that is 0.83MB/s.
What does
this all mean? It means that
this drive will perform fast
when transferring many small
files, but it’s performance
slows down when working with
larger files.
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When looking
online, I found the 128MB version of this watch
available between $80-$90. That’s not bad
considering you have a nice-looking watch to wear and
you are able to store files. If you are the type
of person who would like to be able to carry files with
them and show some class, this is the watch for you.
This watch is a good alternative to carrying an extra
USB flash drive with you or if you are a bit forgetful. |
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Reviewed by
ronald@digitalreviews.net |
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