The Inevitable 256GB Thumb Drive Comes To Pass, Via Kingston

@Ghettoshark: porn.

@Ghettoshark: Hold on a sec... First you say you have a 320 GB, and now you say you don't ever need more than 500 GB...
clearly you need another 180 GB... or possibly 256 GB? great. I've got the perfect product for you!

psychiccheese

For when you absolutely positively must carry the entire library of congress with you at all times.

Deimos_Anomaly

you've got to be kidding!

@guitargraham: You stole my idea! Anyways, childishness aside, that would probably make windows 7 with 512 MB ram very usable. Or it might just be a ridiculous waste of money. Also since the maximum ram allowed in windows 7 is 192 GB imagine the superfetching going on there!

test356965

I lose flash drives about once a week, so this wouldn't be the best flash drive to buy, would it?

furedeikun

@Ghettoshark: well congratulations you'll never have to buy another computer ever again, now for the rest of us...

chang187

@Ghettoshark: I have about 350GB of music collected.. and growing

Denver80203

@insomniaq: Well, SOMEone has disposable income... :)

EdgesRazor

@reddingofish: I was just kidding. That was really the only reason I could think to buy the silly thing.

EdgesRazor

@EdgesRazor: No it will not. USB 2 data rate is too slow for a proper gaming drive.

reddingofish

I wonder if it is just as easy to BRICK a 256Gig USB drive by pulling it out without stopping it as it is my 1g drives?

jsutton

Although 256GB's for $900 bucks is a bit out there for me, large flash drives like this one make Linux on your USB drive really sweet (minus the comparatively slow read/write speed)

Also if you can fit 256 GB in a flash drive how long is it going to be before we see the next big jump in the SSD market. I'd love to go to all SSDs but for my personal needs I need at least 500 GB of space (affordable space at that) before it's worth it.

@SamuelHippomedon: A quick Newegg search finds 7 1TB HDDs for less than $100, I hope you're talking about SSDs and in that case if you don't think the price has come down you're not remembering what they started at.

@Ghettoshark:one simple answer: portable PRON! :)
seriously tho, i have to agree with Bigbadbikernerd

justsomereportingguy

@Ghettoshark: Comments on sites like this always amuse me... "Why would anyone ELSE need something when *I* don't use it?" Yeah, heaven forbid people utilize their computer differently than you.

cloudnine

But will it run Crysis?

EdgesRazor

once it hits 512GB! say goodbye to my external harddrive, awesome!

@Ghettoshark:
If you do any HD video or anything you would use a lot of space. The only thing that many might have issue with is the speed of USB would be a little slow (oh and the price currently ;) ), so Booting an OS from there and running it might not be the greatest (though it would be convenient). Only if they made multiple versions of the thumb drive like a Firewire version.

The last Kingston flash drive I have the bottom broke off within 3 days and it was lost forever off my keys. $900..NO THANKS

TheCrudMan

Is that a bottle opener on the back?

TheCrudMan

@Scott Messinger: I paid $70 for a 256MB thumb drive/MP3 player.

reddingofish

@Bigbadbikernerd: I use Photoshop routinely and I haven't yet had a space issue. For my purposes, which is mainly GFX work and some video editing, I'll never need more than 500GB.

I think that computers have gotten to a point where the advantage of moving up is becoming less and less essential. I'm still running Windows XP, Adobe CS3. and the such and for me, i see no reason to upgrade either.

Ghettoshark

Yeah, this makes a lot of sense... NOT.

I can't see anyone valuing the portability aspect of this drive for ~$300. You can get a 256 SSD for ~$600, and then buy a cheap enclosure for ~$30 and save the cash. If the only real benefit is "shock resistance" (aka I dn't lose my data if i accidentally drop this thing), there's really no reason I see to buy this.

diredesire

We'll see 1TB "jump" drives in a few years and a few years after that the price will come down to something people can actually afford.

It is nice of them to include a retractable tip instead of that annoying little cap.

bustedchain

@Ghettoshark:

For me, I like to use a program like (MojoPac or Ceedo) and load certain programs right to the stick itself. Programs that not every office has or has access to. So while pics or music alone might not be a compelling reason, running AutoCad or Crystal Reports or Dreamweaver etc. on a foreign computer are a great advantage.

jsjohnson

Holy data leak potential batman!

dawib

I still remember paying $70 for a 1GB Lexar Jump Drive.

And yes, I have never even filled that up.

Scott Messinger

@Ghettoshark:

Ah yes, the annual ‘who needs that much space’ question.

The answer – YOU do – 3 years from now.

nutbastard

@Bigbadbikernerd: I remember hearing "1 GB of storage, we will never need another computer."
I also remember when 1 TB Storage Units cost tens of thousands and they were basically attached to air conditioning units for cooling.

benjamoon

@Bigbadbikernerd:
Actually, there's a growing trend in computing to make software smaller, leaner, and more efficient. Just look at Snow Leopard.

The end result is proportionally more space relative to advances in computer hardware.

Lukasz Fabis

woah. i still have a 256 MB flash drive laying around somewhere.

Also - this has great potential for the bit torrent crowd.

I present you with a gallon milkshake and a coffee stirrer. Enjoy.

@Ghettoshark: It depends whether it is personal or business use. I am sure there are business needs for such a device, and simply making the device available is likely to bring the price down to $200 in two years.

One place I can imagine this having context is the film industry, where video can take up a lot of space. Sending this device by post is probably faster than sending the same amount of data over the internet in some cases.

twilight-arc

Finally a drive that I can carry all my music to and from work in my pocket.

reddingofish

@Ghettoshark: Yeah, I heard people say that with the old computers back in the day. "120 megabyte hard drive? Man...you'll never fill that up..."

In the computer world, you can bet that things will get smaller, capacities will get larger, and applications will eat even more precious memory.

They call the 256 gig flash drive the DataTraveler THREEHUNDRED? Shouldn't it be... you know... 256?

For that much capacity - which I think is great - I'll wait for USB 3.0 capability before I buy one so it doesn't take 8 hours to fill up with HD (porn) Disney

@Purple Monkey Dishwasher: I agree. I really can't think of any rational human being who would pay $900 for a flash drive. While that much storage would be AWSOME in a flash drive, it will still have to be in the $100 - $200 dollar range before I would even consider it.

Wow... Just imagine using that with ReadyBoost!

@kirby822:
If it can actually write at 10 MB/Second, it should take about 7 hours and 17 minutes to write to the whole thing.
Which is better than one would expect

Steeldrumhero

The only problem with this is that the thing would take a month just to upload that much data into the thing. I'm sure it's slow as hell.

HJTravels

i remember when my hard drive, no larger than 1GB was that much... now, i can get something like 256 times that amount! AND IT'S EASILY PORTABLE!
what a day and age we live in...

deathscent

Should help to lower the price of all those smaller USB thumbdrives.

Priced to sell I see.

stryder100

I'll pass untill they make these available in humping-dog form...

Now all we need is for Brando to make one of these that also doubles as an international wall outlet adapter (with expandable cup holder) and we'll be all set.

FooSchnickens

All I know is, that I want several of these hummers.

mikegriffin

$900, huh? for $900 you can get a 500GB hard drive with a very, very nice laptop attached to it.

MightyHorse

nope

unclemeat79

I'd doubt that these things will be that cheap in just a year, internal hard drives still aren't that cheap yet and these usually cost more because their smaller.

SamuelHippomedon

It would take a day just to fill it in Vista. I do like where they are going with these though. It makes it a whole lot easier to carry my DVD collection and not have to choose which one to watch on the plane this way.

Man, this kind of thing would be REALLY nice for playing Steam games at a friend's house.

ReconToaster

@Purple Monkey Dishwasher:

Yeah man, I remember when I bought my 1GB memory stick for my PSP for a cool 100 dollars.

ReconToaster

This is corporate credit card worthy.

@Ghettoshark: Just because you don't have needs, doesn't mean others don't. I'm still in university, and from the forst 3 years I have amassed over 6TB worth of data for school, on top of that I am a photographer on the side, so I have GB upon GB of raw images.

scaldinglake

@Purple Monkey Dishwasher: Correction, a month or 2!

My question? Why would anyone need that much?

I have barely 320 GB on my PC and it's more than enough for what I do.

Ghettoshark

Make it in a Humping Dog variety and you got yourself a winner.

@Jere Hakala:For what it's worth, their spec sheet has it rated as "Data transfer rates of up to 20MB/sec. read and 10MB/sec. write"

kirby822

I have a strange feeling that the drive is.. slow :E.

Jere Hakala

I'd say they just skip the US release until these things become like $30 bucks which will likely be in like a year or two.

Purple Monkey Dishwasher

@guitargraham:
Only in Windows 7, Windows Vista has a 4 gb cap.

bnetter12

@AppleAppleApple:
Ha, I still have a 32 mb flash drive.

bnetter12

@Scott Messinger:
Some people use the flash drive more, most including me, use it just to transport data between two or more computers.

bnetter12

@insomniaq:
Really you would pay hundreds extra just to make it smaller.

bnetter12

@Ghettoshark:
And also how can you have barely 320 gb, you either do or don't.

bnetter12

@Ghettoshark:
Well for people who have alot of photos video, music, games and other multimedia items it can take alot of space.

bnetter12