Are There Too Many Cute USB Drives?

By On July 28, 2009 · 6 Comments · In Accessories

So today CrunchGear has a very cute USB drive in the shape of a penguin that is bootable and has a booktable version of Ubuntu Linux on it. awww. While this device is certainly very adoreable and the shape is apropos to what’s on the drive, I have to wonder: are there just too many of these things, now?

Like the Transformers ones I pointed out the other week. Or these ones shaped like bombs (yes — but cartoon, round-ball bombs, not IEDs). Or any number of cute, toy-like USB drives which, can I point out, usually have lower capacity and a higher price. Like I said, they are the keychain toys of the new millennium.

There has to be a point at which the lack of storage space makes cute USB drives too useless ot bother with. The penguin one has added functionality and supports a good cause. Most cute drives don’t even offer those benefits. (Plus, I think I paid $20 for the last 16GB drive I bought and it was very simple to turn it into a bootable drive and install Linux distros from it.)

I can’t tell if I’m just being cranky and middle-aged or if this really is as silly as I see it. You decide!

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  • http://www.spoinky.net/ Nina

    THAT IS SUPER ADORABLE. I definitely agree, though, that adorableness diminishes quite quickly without useful features.

  • Lori S.

    Reject the binary. You’re cranky and you’re right (but, hey, *I’m* middle-aged). A small USB drive has its uses (like, um, backing up my writing folder…), but they are totally the new keychain toy of this millennium, and there are sooo many of them that are clearly trading off of “I’m cute! So I can be overpriced and undersized! Hooray for capitalism!”

    It would certainly be handy if I could have cute *and* high-capacity. And with a keychain ring :) On the cap end and not the drive end, please, so that I don’t have to plug my entire set of house keys into the back of my computer when I’m doing backups.

  • http://marydell.livejournal.com Mary Dell

    They all suck, because they’re so small, although I enjoy the cuteness. But if I want kawaii thingies that don’t hold any useful data I can just buy more re-ment.

    I’d like a cute 1TB USB drive.

  • Pat Cadigan

    There aren’t enough cute USB drives. We need more. OK, I need more. With greater capacities.

  • http://matthewdaly.dreamwidth.org/ Matthew

    If my memory of credit card-sized 4-function calculators is any guide, there will soon be more, but they’ll be free and pre-loaded with some company’s marketing campaign. Maybe someday they’ll be cheap enough that we’ll all be buying a case of personalized USB keychains to send out our resume or first novel. That’d suit me just fine; I think it will be a long time before I start looking down on a gigabyte as not enough space for free.

  • Diatryma

    I like mine to be identifiable– I will use paint if necessary. But really, cheap storage wins.

    Matthew, I’ve had friends go to conferences where, instead of paper programs with abstracts, they got flash drives with a PDF version.