Active Media Announces USB Key Drive

The past few months have been filled with announcements of newer and better technologies, the fresh CPUs and DirectX 11 graphics cards being the most noteworthy. In the meantime, practically every other hardware maker in existence has released or unveiled a product at least remotely capable of taking advantage of a new invention or another. This cannot be said about Active Media Products, however, since this manufacturer of Flash-based storage has not exactly been active lately.

AMP has been quite silent over the past months, even as its rivals were aggressively launching new flash drives and SSDs. Now, the company has finally broken the silence and appears not to be especially eager to experiment with newer technologies. Instead, it took it upon itself to create a USB 2.0 flash drive that is as small and easy to carry as possible. The result is a key-shaped drive “ideal for transporting data anywhere.”

Of course, one could say that any flash drive can suffice for transporting data, since most usually have no problem fitting inside a pocket, but AMP made sure its R4G-KEY2 and R8G-KEY2 stand at, or very near, the top of the portability pyramid. They measure only 2.3 x 1.1 x 0.1 inches (58 x 29 x 3 mm), even as they still manage to pack 4GB and 8GB of space, respectively. This equates to roughly 2,400 6-megapixel photos or 2,000 MP3 music files. Of course, being based on the USB 2.0 interface, transfer rates will never actually go beyond 480Mbps.

The R4G-KEY2 and R8G-KEY2 have street prices of $12.95 and $21.95, respectively, and should suit the needs of most mainstream users that are constantly on the move. Both keys are backward compatible with USB 1.1 ports, as well as Microsoft Windows operating systems, MAC OS X and Linux.