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The £650 flash drive!

By Barry Collins

Posted on 20 Jul 2009 at 13:58

Kingston has unveiled the "world's first" 256GB flash drive - but it will cost you more than £650 ($1,000) to get your hands on it.

The 70.7 x 16.9 x 22mm device raises flash drive storage to the kind of capacity you normally associate with laptop hard disks.

Kingston claims the drive is "ideal for netbook users who want to extend the limited capacity of their machines", although given the device costs about twice as much as a netbook, buyers could probably get more storage by purchasing two of the cheap ultraportables.

The drive itself has a cap-less design, with retractable USB connector to protect the device when it's not in use. The drive is also Windows Readyboost enabled, although we've previously seen little performance benefit with Readyboost using our real-world benchmarks.

The DataTraveler 300 claims data transfer speeds of up to 20MB/sec, and comes with a five-year guarantee.

The device is made on a build-to-order basis, with a suggested retail price of £565.67 exc VAT - that's £650.52 once the tax man gets his pound of flesh.

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