JumpDrives

[Jim Godward]

I was at Costco today and they had 1 g jumpdrives for $45 before tax. ?There was also a coupon for $10 off effective the week of June 12.

You may want to check with your local Costco! ?VBG ?I am sending Pat for mine as I will be in VA that week!

 

[Bob Buchanan]

I was at Costco today and they had 1 g jumpdrives for $45 before tax. ?There was also a coupon for $10 off effective the week of June 12.

You may want to check with your local Costco! ?VBG ?I am sending Pat for mine as I will be in VA that week!

A 1 gig Flash Drive in today's Sacramento Fry's ad (Friday, June 9) is $27.99 after a $12.00 rebate. A 2 gig is $49.99 after a $20.00 rebate.

 

[Pat]

Are those mail-in rebates?  I hate those.  I don't look at prices post-rebate.

--pat

 

[Bob Buchanan]

Are those mail-in rebates?? I hate those.? I don't look at prices post-rebate.

--pat

Yep -- and I hate them too. The idea is for the buyer to forget to mail them in -- which I have done. However, over the years have never had one that was not honored. The best approach for me is to mail the rebate form as soon as I make the purchase.

That price of a 2g drive is the best I have found anywhere.

 

[Jim Dick]

Yep -- and I hate them too. The idea is for the buyer to forget to mail them in -- which I have done. However, over the years have never had one that was not honored. The best approach for me is to mail the rebate form as soon as I make the purchase.

That price of a 2g drive is the best I have found anywhere.

Bob,

You are correct in that the seller hopes you forget to mail in the rebate. Steve Pally and I had one that was not honored by the manufacturer. It was for some blank CDs. Because we purchased them at Staples, they honored the rebate after finding out the company went bankrupt.

 

[Jim Godward]

Bob,

My nearest Fry's is in Portland OR, about 600+ miles!!  :-((

 

[Bob Buchanan]

Bob,

My nearest Fry's is in Portland OR, about 600+ miles!!? :-((

That's OK. My mother and dad used to drive all the way across town to get a bargain on a case of canned corn or whatever to save half of what then spent in gas to get there. When leaving Texas after buying my new used MH in April, my brother-in-law suggested I drive to Wyoming each time I needed to fill up on my way back to NCal as that's where the cheapest prices were at the time. 

If I am out of a Fry's range for more than 2 months, I start getting very intense withdrawal symptoms. 

 

[Smoky]

When do you think the 1 and 2 gig SD camera cards will come down in price?  ;D

 

[Lou Schneider]

On a related note, Wal-Mart now has a MP3 player that uses a jump drive for memory.  Put a list of MP3 songs on a jump drive, plug it into the player, plug the player into your cigarette lighter and listen to the tunes on your car radio.  It will also broadcast to a portable radio within about 50 ft. of the rig.  Cost is $29.

 

[Tom and Margi]

Help me out here, guys.  ???

My first USB plug-in was called a memory stick.  The second (1G) was called a thumb drive.  Now I'm hearing flash drives and jump drives.  Are these interchangeable terms or are there real differences between them? 

Margi

 

[John From Detroit]

Each manafacturer has their own name for what is basically the same device... One calls it a Memory Stick (though that normally refers to a ram based device) others call them Thumb Drives, Jump Drives, Flash Drives and I'm sure there are even more names out there.  All the same thing, just one is Sony, one is Sans-Disk One is ________ (You get to fill in the name)

 

[Karl]

Margi,

For the most part, the names are interchangeable. There are a few devices out there that use a 1" mini hard drive - stay away fromm those; they're really slow. Among the other flash drives, some are slow and others are very fast. The key spec's to look for are Data Transfer Rate, Read Speed, and Write Speed. Whatever your choice, look it up on the mfg's website and check out the spec's. You may want to check out this page for some comparisons. Even though it's somewhat dated, you'll get an idea of what to look for.
Flash Drive Speeds

 

[judway]

I bought a 2 gB LG USB drive at Sam's for $80. My computer shows a USB drive present, but asks for an installation disk. I didn't get one. What do I do next?

Wayne

 

[Lowell]

Wayne,
You might not need an installation disk if your computer recognizes the flash drive being there.  Try saving a file on the flash drive and retrieving it.
Jake

 

[Jim Godward]

I picked up a 1G drive yesterday at Staples for $30.

 

[judway]

Jake

It does not recognize it as a drive. It shows up in the device manager as "other devices" with a question mark, and called a USB drive.

Wayne

 

[Bob Buchanan]

Margi,

For the most part, the names are interchangeable. There are a few devices out there that use a 1" mini hard drive - stay away fromm those; they're really slow. Among the other flash drives, some are slow and others are very fast. The key spec's to look for are Data Transfer Rate, Read Speed, and Write Speed. Whatever your choice, look it up on the mfg's website and check out the spec's. You may want to check out this page for some comparisons. Even though it's somewhat dated, you'll get an idea of what to look for.
Flash Drive Speeds

Glad you posted this, Karl, as speed is a real issue with some flash drives -- especially the really cheap smaller capacity drives. The higher capacity drives are probably all 2.0 vs. 1.1, but I would always double check anyway. More and more of the parks using my SW are going to flash drives for backup vs. CD-RW's. However, a few parks I look at the flash drives are so slow they are almost unusable.

 

[Bob Buchanan]

I bought a 2 gB LG USB drive at Sam's for $80. My computer shows a USB drive present, but asks for an installation disk. I didn't get one. What do I do next?

Wayne

What operating system are you using, Wayne? If XP, have you downloaded all the updates available? If no CD came with the drive, it is a plug and play device that WinXP should recognize -- if you have all the latest downloads.

Try unplugging the drive, waiting a few seconds, then replugging it in. XP may not have done it's plug and play thing the first time.

Finally, if using an older version of Windows, go on the internet to the manufactures web site and download their driver.

 

[Bob Buchanan]

When do you think the 1 and 2 gig SD camera cards will come down in price?? ?;D

2GB Kingston Secure Digital and pqi Compact Flash cards were advertised in the June 9 Sacto Bee ads for $39. No rebate required.

 

[Ned]

The key words to watch for are Full Speed vs. High Speed.  Full Speed is only USB 1.1, 12Mbits/second where Hi-Speed USB mode is capable of a much faster 480Mbits/second.

If you are running Windows XP, you do not need any drivers to use the device, unless it supports special functions like compression or encryption.  These are not necessary for the normal fuctioning of the drive.

I would delete the device from the device manager, then reboot to be safe, then reinsert the drive.  XP should recognize it and install any necessary drivers without any CD needed.

Give us the exact model number and we can research this in more detail.