Price tag to keep customers away

Jul 20, 2009 14:38 GMT  ·  By

Kingston Technology, one of the world's leading vendors of NAND Flash-based memory products, has just announced another addition to its line of DataTraveler USB flash-drives, expanding the storage capacity to a world's first 256GB. The new DataTraveler 300 comes just weeks after the company's previously announced DataTraveler 200, which was launched as the world's first 128GB USB drive. With the launch of its new DataTraveler 300, Kingston doubles the storage capacity of the world's highest-capacity USB flash drive, providing high-end users with even more storage in the same convenient form factor.

“The DataTraveler 300 will enable users to carry huge volumes of data with them everywhere they go - up to 365 CDs for example. That's one album for every day of the year, and it demonstrates how far flash technology has developed,” said Kirsty Miller, product marketing manager, Consumer, Kingston Technology Europe. “Business users and consumers can also safeguard their data by initialising the Password Traveler software which will allow them to password protect their data in a privacy zone without the need of administrator rights.”

The drive features the same USB 2.0 interface that is available on the majority of USB flash drives and computer devices and measures in at 70.68 x 22.37 x 16.45 mm. It boasts a cap-less design with a sliding USB connector and comes with support for Microsoft's Windows ReadyBoost. As far as performance goes, the drive is said to be capable of providing users with speeds of up to 20MB/s for read and 10MB/s for write.

Additionally, Kingston has also included the Password Traveler security software and a five-year warranty for its high-capacity 256GB drive. As far as pricing goes, be ready to spend as much as $934.2, without VAT, which is rather high, even for an SSD price point.