Yesterday GetUSB.info reported on Kingston giving U3 the axe and their decision to stop selling the portable application bundled into Kingston UFDs.

Interestingly enough, part of that announcement indicated sales for U3 devices are lack-luster and demand for U3 drives aren’t high enough to offset the royalty fee associated with platform.

However, as the story broke, GetUSB.info just finished their latest USB Poll on “Do You Own a Flash Drive With U3 Software?” The results concluded that 64% of GetUSB.info readers have U3 drives, where as the balance do not. Seems to us, there are some mixed numbers. (more…)

Kingston Technology released a statement yesterday giving U3 the axe for pre-installation on USB flash drives. Kingston will stop selling the U3 product because the royalty fees are too great for the price sensitive flash memory market.

Kingston explained its decision in saying that extra bundled software means additional costs for consumers. The company already has its own similar platform to substitute for U3, according to company sources.

According to some IC controller design houses, SanDisk - the big player advocating U3 - charges about a 5% royalty fee for adopting the U3 platform. (more…)

Griffin, maker of all things iPod, introduces a very eye catching polycarbonate reflective case. Powered down, the only identifiable mark of an internal iPod is the nav wheel, power up and the screen comes to life through the luster Griffin finish.

Griffin devised a polycarbonate shinny shell with a rubberized back-side for esthetic compliment and user sure grip. The Griffin Reflect fits the 2nd gen iPod Nano, video and SanDisk Sansa. (more…)

Looking to install U3 on a regular flash drive? Or home-brew upgrade from generic flash drive to U3? Well, it’s not going to work and this is why.

U3 is not just software, it’s hardware too. In other words, if you don’t have the right hardware on the flash drive you’ll never get the U3 launch pad to load. U3 wrote their spec to call for certified IC controllers on the flash drive. Without a specific IC controller U3 will never work. So that’s it. If you want more info then read on. (more…)

Today SanDisk launched their TrustWatch solution for UFD management. As one could guess, with hundreds of UFDs being deployed in a company there becomes a huge security risk for IT managers. TrustWatch is a well thought out solution to manage the complete life cycle of the SanDisk drives.

In short there are 3 main components to TrustWatch.

TrustWatch Access - this component allows management of the UFD itself, such as passwords, email client, spyware scanner etc.

TrustWatch Vault - This of course is the encryption portion of the solution for the UFD. (more…)

SanDisk, the 2nd largest seller of MP3 players just gave the well known Sansa a face lift. The Sansa Connect is the next step in wireless MP3 players. What we like about the Sansa Connect is the ability to access your music or photos via any Wi-Fi hotspot. This means the storage capacity of the player itself isn’t limited, but rather your PC storage capacity determines that - something we all know is east to upgrade.

In addition, the Sansa Connect receives a wide range of music subscription services and streaming Internet radio. With a “live” button to connect into communities and grab features or recommendations for music genres. At 4GBs you can stuff (on average) 1,000 songs into the flash memory, but again, virtually unlimited when exchanging anywhere, anytime via Wi-Fi. Product is expected to hit March of 2007 at about $250USD.

(more…)

Sometimes you want to give USB a big huge. Case in point, the new USBTV from SanDisk is something anyone could apprecate. It’s a device to simply copy video from your PC and play on your TV. The flash drive is loaded with a media player and video codecs so the device will play a video file directly off the USB drive to the TV.

So your TV doesn’t have a USB slot, well neither does mine, but that’s OK (more…)