Flash drives as gifts or personalised promotions

I am short on time this week, so this post will be brief and none too original.

Most people with a PC or laptop will have a flash drive. These devices are often called a memory stick although the two are different kinds of peripherals.

In short, what a flash drive does is allow you to quickly transfer (almost) any kind of data to or from the flash drive using a PC or laptop. The transfer is fast and the data can then be transferred to another machine without the need for more complex or time consuming connection methods.

The flash drive uses a usb port and the device should be automatically recognised for what it is by any operating system like XP or Vista. This means that it will be allocated its own icon in the “My Computer” window enabling data to be “dragged and dropped” to or from the drive.

It is simple and fast, and a flash drive is tiny meaning that you can always have one with you.

Memory sizes go up to 16GB although the 1GB versions are cheap as chips and just about as useful.

One thing to be aware of with a flash drive is the security – or lack there of. If you intend to use one to carry around confidential information, you may be advised to use an encrypting program in the event of loss or theft.

And finally, to the reason for this post!

A number of companies will now personalise a flash drive with a logo, text, or other visual graphic. This makes them a useful and affordable commercial promotion for customers and clients. It also make them a good gift idea.

Here is a site that offer these thing in their “pimped up” form,
http://www.calendarlady.co.uk/promotional_items/personalised_usb_flash_drive.shtml.

Illuminated keyboards, fans and PC peripherals

For those who really are super geeks, it is possible to buy and replace a number of PC peripherals that can jazz up a PC in a range of ways.

The most obvious is a laser mouse which normally has a nice lighting effect, but if your want more “lighting effects” then you can go for an illuminated keyboard.

These keyboards have a number of variations, but all see the keys of the keyboard being back lit in some way.

I most cases the color is blue, but some models have different color choices, or a mix of colors to cover the different zones of the keyboard, e.g. key pad, numeric pad, function row etc.

Quite why anyone would feel the need for such a gadget is beyond me, but it does turn a PC into an ornamental and visually appealing piece of hi-tec furniture and teens, students and geeks alike love them.

If an illuminated keyboard alone is not enough for you, then you can take things one step further.

You can by a transparent plastic or perspex side panel for a PC which makes the (uninteresting) internal workings of the CPU etc visible.

Whilst this on its own has little appeal, you can then add some illuminated fans. These things are the rage and come in many colours and they can be used to replace an existing fan, or better still supplement the fans already cooling the CPU, hard drive etc.

Every PC has slots available for additional fans and the installation is very simple. You plug it in to the power supply (which may be via the main board or a free cable) and then screw the fan (screws will be included) to the case.

Selecting the best aesthetic position inside the PC is critical as this allows the shadows and the spinning effects of the fans to be shown to their optimum.

To see some keyboards, follow this http://www.theglowcompany.co.uk/acatalog/ILLUMINATED_KEYBOARD___MULTIMEDIA.html link and to see some fans, choose this http://www.compusa.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=803 alternative.