Besides greater capacities, faster transfer speeds and novel designs, there hasn’t been much recent innovation with USB flash drives. That is why the Paketta from King Jim is such a welcome break. With built-in Wi-Fi B, G, N hardware it can wirelessly broadcast its contents to PCs and mobile devices.
There are a few caveats, though. The wireless hardware needs power, and since there’s no battery on board, the Packetta needs to be connected to a USB port to broadcast. It also requires a special piece of software for any devices that want to access it wirelessly. And for the time being it’s limited to Windows 7 and iOS devices. But Windows 8 and OS X versions of the app should be available next year.
The other unfortunate feature is its price point. The relatively small 8GB version runs $US115, while the 16GB is $US170. Ouch. Apparently the moral of the story here is that if you want to save yourself $US100+, learn to live with wires. [Packetta via Akihabara News]