By Andrew Liszewski

As they pointed out to me when I stopped by their booth at CES on the weekend, Mimoco’s MIMOBOT flash drives are a subtle way to express your real self at work, particularly if you happen to be a geek stuck in a world of suits and ties. To date the company’s biggest franchise has been their Star Wars themed USB flash drives, but at CES they announced their latest licensing agreement which now brings characters from the DC Comics world into their fold.

First up is a limited edition 5,000 piece run of a vintage 1939-era Batman to be followed by other characters come February including a more recent Batman, Robin, The Joker and Catwoman. And further down the line we’ll be seeing characters from other DC Comics’ franchises get the flash drive treatment like the Green Lantern, Superman and The Flash. And as with previous versions, the drives range in size from 2GB to 16GB and include pre-loaded character specific content like wallpapers and screensavers.

[ PR - CES 2011: Mimoco Joins Forces With Warner Bros. Consumer Products For DC Comics Inspired Designs Kicking Off With A BATMAN x MIMOBOT® USB Flash Drive Collection ]

By Ian Chiu

More and more companies are starting to catch on to the fact that the SuperSpeed interface is a veritable godsend for flash drives. When you remove the bandwidth bottleneck that was really the only thing keeping flash drives back what you can get can be astonishing; as you can get power & performance that still can fit in the palm of your hand!

The latest company to bring out a USB 3.0 flash drive is Kingston (following Super Talent) with their Data Traveler Ultimate 3.0. Compared to the older Data Travelers, this new model’s official speed of 80MB/s read and 60MB/s write are a much needed improvement, but the write speeds are a tad on the low side when compared to competitors in its price range. Luckily, its above average read speed does make up for some of this shortcoming and only you can really decide if it’s the perfect match for your needs or not. Everything USB has the full review.

[ Everything USB - Kingston Data Traveler Ultimate 3.0 Flash Drive Review ]

By Andrew Liszewski

It’s hard to imagine someone making something as simple as a USB flash drive more useful, besides of course larger capacities, but Verbatim’s Clip-its are a clever mashup of a flash drive and a paperclip that end up being greater than the sum of their parts. Designed by Arman Emami the Clip-its were awarded a much deserved Red Dot ‘Best of the Best’ 2010 design award and I’m sure they’ll be quite popular at CES next year clipped to brochures, press releases and other ancient forms of communication. No word on pricing just yet, nor mention of them on the North American Verbatim site, but they’ll be available in 2GB or 4GB capacities, and hopefully not just in Europe.

[ PR - Store ‘n’ Go “Clip-it USB Drive” – Verbatim´s Red dot Award-winning USB Drive ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

By Andrew Liszewski

What’s the first thing you do when someone gives you a promotional run-of-the-mill flash drive? You check the capacity to see if it’s big enough to be a keeper, or a future giveaway. But this Voltron Nekobot flash drive from INCUBOT Productions could be packing a measly 32MB and I’d still carry it everywhere. Thankfully it packs a usable, though not overly impressive, 2GB of storage which is accessible once Voltron’s been split apart at the waist. Pricing and availability haven’t been announced yet, but a limited edition ThinkGeek-only Nekobot flash drive currently sells there for $39.99.

[ Voltron Nekobot Flash Drive ] VIA [ Plastic and Plush ]

By Ian Chiu

Even though USB 3.0 is starting to appear on high end PCs and notebooks, the rest of us are still stuck with slow and old USB 2.0. There’s no point in investing in something that you couldn’t even take advantage of for now. This is especially the case with USB 3.0 flash drives which get a massive boost in performance, but they come at a jaw-dropping price premium. So, there’s still a market for USB 2.0 flash drives even if the room improvement is small.

Corsair’s latest Flash Voyager GTR flash drive – backed by a generous ten-year warranty – comes in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB. What makes them special isn’t the sequential read or write speed (which is already bottlenecked by USB 2.0), but the small file write. This is noteworthy since transfer rate tends to drop as file sizes get smaller. The Flash Voyager GTR is able to maintain a respectable 21MB/s during 2MB write test, twice the speed of other drives. The large file tests are equally impressive. All in all, it makes sense to check out write performance as most companies primarily focus on read.

[ Everything USB - Corsair Flash Voyager GTR Flash Drive Review ]

By Andrew Liszewski

For the well-dressed IT guy or BOFH (are there any who aren’t?) comes this stylish set of engravable cufflinks from Ravi Ratan that each feature a concealed 2GB USB flash drive. So for $195 you essentially get 4GB of storage, sleeve cuffs that aren’t flapping in the wind and a mystery metal. I want to assume they’re made of silver, but CuffLinks.com makes no mention that they are. Though gold plated versions are also available for the same price.

[ 2GB USB Flash Drive Cufflinks ] VIA [ GeekAlerts ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Well you know the drill by now. Even though it’s obviously not even close to being as big as the real thing, you throw one of these Uzi-shaped USB flash drives in your suitcase before hitting the airport and you can pretty much guarantee your vacation or business trip is over before it even begins. So I’ll let you decide if the $22 price tag for 4GB of novelty storage is worth getting your name thrown on every watch list around the world.

[ Machine Gun USB Drive ] VIA [ Coolest Gadgets ]

By Andrew Liszewski

With 200 MB/s read and 170 MB/s write speeds, A-DATA’s new N002 flash drive makes a convincing argument to upgrade to USB 3.0. But if you’re not ready to take the bleeding edge plunge just yet, the drive is also equipped with a SATA II connection and is even backwards with USB 2.0, though you’ll be taking a bit of a speed hit there. A-DATA claims the drive will be hitting the market sometime in January of 2010 and will be available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities, though pricing information has not been announced yet.

[ PR - A-DATA N002 Combo Flash Drive ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’ll spare you my thoughts on the new Star Trek film, given this isn’t a movie-review site, and I seem to stand in the minority with my opinions, but if you were a fan of Abrams take on the Trek universe you might be interested in this limited edition version of the film which comes on a 4GB Starfleet insignia flash drive. (Each one is individually numbered.) The digital copy of the film is all DRM’d up so it can only be played on up to 5 registered devices, or burned to a DVD, and it’s about 1GB in size, leaving you 3GB of storage to boldly store what no man has stored before. ~$28 from Play.com.

[ Star Trek (2009) USB Stick ]