Today's review product turned the tables on her, though. With an excess of mirth, I watched her reaction to the Verbatim TUFF-'N'-TINY™ 8gig portable flash drive. Giggly as a school girl, she immediately laid claim to the drive. As you can see from the pictures, the TUFF-'N'-TINY is a diminutive flash drive, even pixie-like. This set her to fawning over it and laying out plans to keep it on one of her cherished stuff animals. Having already hatched my own nefarious schemes for the drive, I suddenly felt a bit like a selfish schoolboy, hesitant to share. Rarely will a piece of computer hardware invoke this sort of reaction in our house. However, looks are not everything. To get a good review from me, this Lilliputian flash drive will have to put forth decent numbers and live up to its claim of being tough.

Our lives come down to a succession of choices which inevitably lead us through our triumphs and failures. Not to discount random circumstance, clarity of purpose often ensures a more favorable outcome than cloudy half-formed goals listlessly pursued. I am willing to bet successful men and women are capable of narrowing down the sum of their lives to a few well-timed, ingenious decisions. However, the majority on the other side of the coin could list a litany of misfires, sins of omission and outright failures that led them down the wrong path.  A successful company can also be boiled down to correct choices made at the right time. When dealing with computer hardware manufacturers, the results are tangible, quality products. Like our individual lives, every product to hit the market is the culmination of decisions. Some are misfires and there are sins of omission and others are catastrophic failures. Today we're looking at the Verbatim 8 GB TUFF-CLIP, a great flash drive, showcasing what happens when a company makes all the right decisions.

OCZ is one of those companies who looks out for everyone. No matter if you are a hard core gamer with lots of money to buy extreme gear or a budget minded individual that has to make every dollar count, they have you in mind. With this way of thinking, OCZ have released several classes of solid state drives ranging from the Solid series to the Vertex EX. Our first review of a SSD will consist of a model from their mainstream line up: Agility. The Agility is based around a Indilinx controller backed by Elpida 64MB cache chip. These two components gives the Agility its performance numbers. What keeps the Agility a low cost alternative to other solid state drives with similar number is the inexpensive NAND modules used. But just how inexpensive is the Agility? Just how fast is the Agility? Read on and find out.

Our friends at Wintec have solved that problem with the new Card-It-All. The C.I.A. takes a single MicroSD card and fits it into adapters that can be used a multitude of devices. A Sony device…no problem. A Nikon digital camera…no problem.  Got a netbook that needs a little bit more storage…need no problem. The C.I.A. has it all covered. Wintec states all adapters meet the high capacity (HC) specifications.

For those who require fast data transfers, the ExpressCard 34 Ultra is a nice substitute for the usual flash drive. The Card offers tremendous speeds. In fact, we have never seen speed like this from a flash drive. How does an advertised 115MB/s read and 65MB/s write sound? Not too bad, when you need your data in a hurry. The ExpressCard 34 Ultra SSD could be the ultimate data storage, but what if you don't have a expresscard slot? The card comes with a mini USB jack to connect to any PC or MAC. Well, that's enough for an introduction. Lets take a closer look at the Filemate.

Our next Pico we will be reviewing is the Pico-C Nickel. Which like the Gold model is plated with the precious metal. The advantage the Nickel has over the Gold we reviewed is an additional 8 gigs of storage. Not only is the storage size a pretty amazing aspect of the Pico but its physical size is as well. The Pico weighs in at an incredible 6 grams. At this size the drive is a non factor while hanging around your neck on a necklace or on your key chain.

Well, I guess we should be asking OCZ that question. It is funny that the minds of OCZ could come up with a twist on something so simple and common. The OCZ Throttle takes the newest and fastest port on the PC and makes it usable for small portable storage. You know the port we are talking about…eSATA. The Throttle is offered in sizes ranging from 8 gigs up to 32.

Christmas is just around the corner and you've probably been putting shopping off until the last possible minute. Who can blame you? With the Economy the way it is, we're all going to be lucky to get anything under the tree. However, you have a techie who expects some sort of computer-related gift on or around Dec. 25th. Let me introduce you to the Blue USB Super Kid Flash Drive 8 gig version. Courtesy of Brando Workshop, this quirky little flash drive just might be just worth stuffing into someone's stocking this year.