The V-Drive Flash Pen offers an alternative approach to Flash-based storage by doubling as a writing implement. While this innovation is likely to prove popular as a company incentive or promotional gift item, many may find its relatively bulky size a little cumbersome when connecting to a PC.

Pros: Innovative concept; encryption software supplied
Cons: Relatively bulky and heavy


V-Tec's latest USB Flash storage device, the V-Drive Flash Pen, is the industry's first storage device that also doubles as a writing implement. Although hardly the most exciting of selling points, there's no doubt the pen-shaped device will find its way into the shirt pockets of IT and sales staff worldwide.

The Flash storage device is available in a range of storage capacities from 64MB (£39) to 512MB (£131). As well as providing a backup medium, the V-Drive Flash Pen also lets you write onto a paper-based substrate using blue or black refillable ink cartridges. V-Tec supplies one refill of each colour, which are replaced by pulling the device apart and using the supplied retraction utensil. However, if you manage to lose the screwdriver-like implement, swapping the ink refills could prove a little tricky.

The device connects to your PC by unscrewing the pen top and then connecting the exposed USB 2.0 connector to your PC or Mac. Once connected, you can then use the V-Drive Flash Pen as a regular mass storage device by dragging and dropping data to and from the device.

Similar to the company's V-Drive, the V-Drive Flash Pen comes as standard with Cosine's WinSecurity 2.5 Lite, a software utility that lets you encrypt and compress files on your PC and V-Drive Flash Pen. This easy-to-use application also lets you send and receive e-mails securely using Outlook or Outlook Express on any computer. By utilising your personal e-mail settings, the software transmits and downloads e-mails to and from the V-Drive Flash Pen, so no data is left behind on the computers you use to access your e-mail accounts. There's also a 20-character alphanumeric password utility that should help you to protect your data in the event that an unauthorised person tries to access data on the device.

The V-Drive Flash Pen comes in a black or silver case, which may make it an ideal company incentive or promotional gift item, or even a Christmas stocking filler. However, its relatively bulky size might mean that you can't fit it next to another USB cable connected to your PC. For example, our test PC only has two USB ports at the back of the system. One of these ports is occupied by a Palm USB cradle connection. In order to use the rather wide V-Drive Flash Pen we had to first remove the Palm cable, which proved annoying after just a few minutes of cable swapping.

BIOS, Oct 29, 03 | Print | Send | Comments (0) | Posted In Backup