Sony 16GB USB Key

Well, my 8 GB Kingston Datatraveller was getting too flaky lately so I hunted about on the internets today…

I found a wonderful deal!!! Future Shop (Best Buy owns them) had the Sony 16GB MicroVault (USM16GJE) on sale for only $39. It was marked down $50. I don’t usually buy Sony because of the price but this was a great deal. When I looked at NewEgg and such, the shipping was more than enough to make the $39 +tax a terrific deal.

As a device, the Sony offers the ever nice sliding cover so the connector retracts into the housing. The slider on the side does lock in the in and out position and requires you to press in to let it move so it is quite secure. The slider doubles as the read/write indicator. Another nice aspect of the form of the unit is that it is skiny. It is not much bigger than the size of the USB connector so it will easily fit into even the most stupidly designed USB ports on the front of a PC.

I have tested the write speed by copying the Vista SP1 file to it and it sustained a solid 13MB per sec. A nice peppy speed for the price. Even when copying small files, it would average about 5MB per sec. I have also successfully formatted the key so that it is DOS bootable and have tested it successfully so if you are looking to use this in a more technical fashion, then it will do the job fine.

All in all it is just another USB key but when you start using USB keys a lot, all of the little things that are stupid can grow to be annoying. My ultimate pet peeve is end caps that are not on a lanyard. They are the first thing to get lost. Stupid shaped USB keys are also another poor design. They may look cool, but many times, fashion very inconveniently gets in the way. Fortunately, Sony does not fail on either of these elements.