On the occasion that I come across a particularly well made or useful piece of tech, I like to share it with you. I had the good fortune to procure a set of custom made thumb drives that I am loving.
These come from Florida-based USB Memory Direct.
My drives are made from redwood, which is a warm, glowing wood with a lot of depth. The cover is held on by two strong magnets, which give a satisfying snap when you close the unit. Being a woodworker myself, I appreciate the quality of the craftsmanship. The surface doesn’t have a heavy gloss or urethane, — it’s more like a dry oil that gives a nice sheen.
The logo applied is crisp – I mean really crisp (the “lozenge” in the center of my logo has a small opening in it, which they nailed, even though it’s only a couple of mm wide). The logo doesn’t scratch off with your fingernails. It’s simple yet bold, and smacks of integrity.
I pay attention to these details because the quality of the workmanship contained in the drive should be reflected by the drive itself. This small piece of tech is a leave-behind for clients when there’s too much data to post it to my ftp. It may stay on a client’s desk for years, so it’s a piece of advertising that I don’t want to skimp on.
Under the hood, these drives have 32GB of storage and a USB 3.0 transfer speed rated at 24-40MB/s. This rate, of course, assumes the native copy buffer is empty. For me to copy 8GB to the drive, it logged in at 8 minutes. For clients, downloading this data off the drive takes a little less than 2 minutes.
Here’s the link to find wooden USB drives like this. A professional company that sweats the details. After all, that’s what it’s all about.