cpu upgrades

As stated in other reviews - this product works as advertised. I use it to transfer files between a PC and Mac at home, and transfer documents between home and work. It works great, and seems to transfer considerably faster when connected to my USB 2.0 card.

Minor quibbles are that the hard plastic cap has cracked in several places. They do supply three caps in clear, smoke, and day-glo yellow. A polypropylene cap would have been more durable.

The USB connector for the 128 MB version is closer to the side with the "Cruzer" label. It might not fit into some recessed USB ports like you'll find on many PC's. I've purchased the 256 MB version as a gift, and it's half the thickness, and is barely thicker than the width of the connector; the 128 MB version is twice as thick (and a little bit shorter). (As an aside, one USB flash drive that fits well in recessed ports is DiskOnKey - sold under their own brand name as well as Targus GoAnywhere, and FujiFilm.) Amazon was directly selling the 256 MB version of the Cruzer Mini a week before this review at a great price, but it's no longer listed (only third party sellers like Circuit City).

The only problem I had was when about 70 MB of capacity suddenly disappeared, and I had to reformat the drive to restore full capacity. I understand this isn't that unusual with flash devices - especially if they've been disconnected while writing. It didn't lose any information that was already on the drive though.

As others have stated, this little drive is really great. It's fast and convenient. I have one thing to reiterate, one to clarify, and one to suggest.

Reiterate: This thing is plug-and-play on various platforms. I have plugged it in to a bunch of machines. Desktops, laptops, Windows 2000, XP, and even Mac. Every time it has installed itself and been another hard drive within about 30 seconds at worst. USB 2.0 is definitely faster, but it's fine with 1.1.

Clarify: I have plugged this into the backs of machines with pretty tight, recessed USB ports with no problem. Of course having a hub or port on the front of the machine is better, but it's not absolutely necessary.

Suggest: If you want to synchronize your flash drive with a directory on your hard drive, go to Tucows and get an application like SyncBack. I setup a cruzermini folder on my hard drives at home and work and now I synchronize them to my cruzer mini drive. It's really handy. Keeps everything up-to-date.

I used my Mini Cruzer for both work and school, and I used it on a daily basis. It was fast, small, and very convenient.

However, you might notice that I am writing in the past tense, because my cruzer just died on me the past week after after five months of use. Of course, it is still under warranty and I will be sending it back to Sandisk this week, but I lost a TON of data that I was not able to recover. I normally keep a back-up, but when the memory stick dies before you are able to back-up your data, life can get pretty bad.

Make sure to keep good back-ups!! Do NOT rely on this or any other memory stick to be fail proof.