Sony Goes Minimalist, Unveils Update to Pocket Bit Mini Line of USB Flash Drives

As the Japanese giant Sony is currently involved in almost all the segments of the consumer electronics market (they're manufacturing just about everything but home nuclear reactors, but, who knows, the PS3 might be modded into such an item), not a week goes by without the company making an announcement related to one of its products. And this time it's something related to portable storage, as the "big S" has just released an update to its Pocket Bit Mini line of USB flash drives (also known as Micro Vault Tiny for our US readers).

The first thing that draws our attention to the new USM-HX is, obviously, the external look. Thus, the new drives are still quite small, but they're also very stylish, as they come either in black or white with a gold color trimming on the sides. Moreover, the devices in the series also sport a very innovative type of case, which allows a drive's USB connector to either face outwards (when inserted in a PC's Universal Serial Bus port) or inwards (during travel), as well as a swiveling cover (for extra security).

The flash drives from the USM-HX series are available in 1 GB and 2 GB flavors, and, as most of the other portable storage solutions launched over the past 2 years, provide extensive support for the ReadyBoost feature in Windows Vista. For those users who have never heard of this particular feature (although I suspect their numbers are quite limited), it's sufficient to say that the ReadyBoost function allows an external storage solution (namely, a flash drive) to act as a "pseudo-RAM", enhancing a computer's performance under Microsoft's latest OS without requiring the addition of actual RAM.

Sony's being quite generous with the future customers, as it also bundles with the new Pocket Bit Mini line an encryption software and a virtual expander tool that maximizes the drive's usable space. Unfortunately, said customers will be, at least for now, only Japanese residents, as this thing is supposed to hit the market just in Sony's home turf, sometime in September, for around $34 (1 GB version) and $52 (2 GB version).

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