The Site With the Lamp

July 11, 2004

I have been looking around the web for a USB drive with voice recorder. Quite suprisingly many such devices available seem to use USB 1.1 and not the faster USB 2.0 interface, USB 1.1 is a big no no since it's only about 1/40 th the speed of USB 2.0

I did find a few low cost thumb drives in a couple of online stores - one brand apacer seems to be particularly cheap - unfortunately both these vendors seem to think 'world wide' means the united states and canada. Talk about stupidity.

This particular brand name is not available in the computer stores in Colombo or even in Singapore. I don't usually buy anything from these vendors in Colombo unless it's unavoidable - it's a cartel.

So far the model that I have identified as most suitable (based on price, USB interface and availability) is the Nomad Muvo TX but's it's expensive. I found another model on Think Geek but their shipping charges will make sure that it's not the cost effective solution.

I was toying with the idea of getting a thumb drive and trying it out as the swap drive cause I had read in the qmail list that it would be faster than using the hard disk for swapping. Now I am having second thoughts. Hard disks can go at faster than 150 MB/s for sequential reading whereas USB drivers it's only around 20MB/s. Time for another look at that mailng list while I wait for a friend to make a visit to Singapore.