I have long transferred data by a four slot card reader and up till now it has always done what I needed. However when the ‘mini’ this and the ‘micro’ that come along they need an adapter so that they adapt to their full size cousins before they can fit in the reader. Here with six slots that is almost solved. It is 10x4.5x1.

Verbatim has recently introduced a new range of Store'n'Go USB drives.  Decked out in the company's familiar blue livery, these drives will be available in capacities of 1, 2, 4 and 8GB.  I have been looking at the 4GB model which has been priced at £19.99. This new USB drive immediately solves one problem that many users of this type of device will be familiar with on a regular basis.

However until very recently transferring to a PC has meant not only removing the micro SD card from the phone but finding the adapter to convert it into a standard SD card and also then the card reader.

From Imation we're looking at the new "Atom Flash Drive", available in 1G, 2G, 4G and 8G bytes sizes. Our test sample is 1Gbyte. This is pitted against the Kingston Data Traveller 100, available in the same sizes.

Poker Mate USB Drive It is 4cm across and .5cm thick. It is red and white with 12 alternate sections the six white ones are plastic and the red ones rubber. This gives a distinct feel in the fingers. There are various capacities available, mine was 1GB and this is clearly written on both sides of the chip.

Apart from the obvious problems with knowing which format you need for a particular product, you're also often left having to buy different card for each of your gadgets. Even ignoring competing formats, individual formats have now spawned whole families of related standards sharing confusingly similar names.

Verbatim USB Drive 4GB This looks like a conventional USB stick drive, just for a moment think that not long ago a 4GB hard disc would be large. It is quite able to do the job of speeding up Vista and indeed does carry the ReadyBoost name. However apart from part or all of the available space being allocated to Vista it comes with a £16.

In an effort to differentiate their USB flash drive products from the competition manufacturers have put in varying degrees of effort into trying to make their particular products stand out from the rest of the pack.  Physical dimensions and various shapes have been tried as the means of differentiating certain brands while others have opted for the approach of adding extra value in the form of bonus software such as Ceedo, U3 and encryption protection.

Over the last few months we have covered a number of memory card offerings and USB flash devices.  Now it is the turn of a product that combines a memory card with a USB stick device that takes over the functionality normally provided by a card reader.  As the world's largest independent manufacturer of memory products, it is not too surprising to know that this new approach to memory cards and USB connectivity should come from Kingston Technology.

Here I am looking at two such devices one by San Disk and the other by Kingston Technology. I have no doubt that numerous other such devices are out there. The only proviso as far as Vista is concerned is that it needs to be a USB2 device so that data can be moved quickly. The whole purpose is to store all the small files available for quick access.

Do you remember your first USB memory device?  In my case it was an 8MB unit.  At the time this device was being promoted as being suitable for all your personal needs when on the move from location to location.  Today most users would be embarrassed to be seen with a USB device of such a low capacity and would consign it to the back of a drawer while making use of one of the higher capacity devices that are currently available.

Up until recently I was totally unaware of a company called Maxfield and I feel that you are probably in the same situation. Maxfield is a German company that was founded in 2003 to manufacture feature-packed personal audio products. Its success can be judged by a 323% increase in sales for 2005 over the previous year and taking top spot in the December sales for Amazon.de over the last two years.

Blue, green, yellow, pink or lilac - the choice of colour is yours. Although some might regard this statement as being fashion related - and why not if that suits you - there is a far more practical reason that I can offer for the different colours used by the Integral USB 2.0 SPLASH Drives. Each colour could be used to identify a specific task or a particular user.