Save and save again (PNY Attaché Premium 2 GB)

Member Name: Donf18

Product:	PNY Attaché Premium 2 GB
Date:	31/10/09 (113 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Superb value

Disadvantages: none

I happened by Aldi the other day just for a quick butchers to see if there were any special offers as I have had many a great deal from them in the past. I unfortunately didn't take much cash in my old forgetful way so was unable to purchase one of the bargains I spied. However I remedied that quickly by returning with the meagre sum of £10.00. I say meagre knowing that to a lot of us a tenner is a tidy sum these days, but in the context of my purchase I believe the term to be correct. I've been looking for a compact flash drive for ages since the one I currently use is no longer large enough for the files I require to backup or keep safe. The one I purchased was the PNY 2GB twin pack for £9.99 a superb bargain considering some offer prices on the net are £7.49 for one.

The units come in that now favourite pre packed plastic bubble thingy, which is almost impossible to get into without scissors. The USB sticks are between 2 and 3 inches long with a width of half an inch give or take 1mm. Metric and old fashioned money all in one there. The height is about 6mm making them quite compact and easy to store in your pocket. They feel light but substantial giving me the impression of robustness and longevity. They are plastic in construction with the majority of the unit being in a black matt finish. Along the centre and toward the working end of the device is an amber clear plastic strip with the embedded word Attaché in an italic type font. All in all it looks really professional, so how does it work.

At the end where the amber plastic forms a T shape is a piece, which covers about a third of the device. This piece is removable by simply giving it a firm tug. This will reveal the connection which plugs into your standard USB port on your computer. On plugging in your should hear a sound played on your PC to indicate a device has been plugged in. There may also be an indication of this procedure in the task bar on the bottom right hand side of your PC. This indication will say new USB device found.......after a few seconds it will proclaim your device working and you are in business. Allowing for formatting you only actually get about 1.87Gb of usable space, which is sufficient for most needs. According to the packaging this is enough space for

1. 1970 5 megapixel images
2. 1035 7 megapixel images
3. Around 600 mp3 songs
4. 30 mins of HD video
5. 3 DivX movies

This is obviously going to vary slightly depend on which formats you use etc etc but is a good general idea of the type of things you can save onto your new device. All the usual procedures to copy onto you PNY 2Gb flash drive will do just that. Opening My Computer will show you your unit as another drive. The letter for this drive will depend on your specific system but assuming you have one hard drive and a DVD/CD drive then the chances are it will show up as "E". If you are unsure as to which drive your PNY is then simple unplug it and the one that disappears is PNY drive.

Reinserting will cause your system to re-detect the drive and your taskbar will go through the motions as described above to detect it.

A double click on the drive will open it for you to drag and drop those files to wish to keep safe. Simplicity I motion. The drive is compatible with Vista, XP, Linux, and Mac operating systems. It is not compatible with Windows 98 according to the little paperwork, which comes with it. I don't know how to measure the data transfer rate and it is not listed on the accompanying docs, but having used it regularly I have found it to be almost instant on my pretty dated system. The fact that there are two in the pack is a big bonus for families who want to keep their personnal info to themselves. I'm well chuffed that I visited Aldi that day and spotted these and got myself yet another Aldi bargain.

Summary: Two great liitle flashdrives