Somebody in the thread at some point said: >>> They are selling San Disk 4GB Cruzer Micro U3 USB Flash drive >>> for $54 (~ $60 dollars shipped) SKU AD0631864 >> I bought exactly that drive for 30 Euros (~41 USD), so you are >> getting ripped off at that price. > > I have obviously unleashed a pack of hostility. Let me say: Everybody agrees the flash devices are great. It's probably just that Dell in particular are famous for ripping people with their options, like the "tick the box" extra memory for Dell PCs and Laptops that is four times the price of getting it yourself. Whereas these flash drives are commodities now and the pricing is falling day by day. FWIW I found the "dual channel" flash drives, that interleave the storage between two separate flash chips so they can operate at twice the overall speed (about 8MBytes/sec *genuine* sustained write over hundreds of MBytes) are worth the extra money. At the sizes they come in nowadays if you are copying large files around it can get very annoying otherwise. 8MBytes/sec is fast enough to "feel like a HDD" to use a rather subjective term. For example I have one of these: http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?Quicklinx=4L02&CategorySelectedId=11152&NavigationKey=11152,50121 It's more expensive than even your Dell pricing for the same 4GB, but if you will write much to it then the premium is worth paying IMO. -Andy
