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Flash Mate
February 18, 2002
The Flash Mate itself is slightly larger than a credit card, measuring 3.75 inches wide and just under 2.5 inches tall, and a bit under half an inch thick. As you can see from the picture, the package includes the card reader, a carrying pouch, and a USB extension cable. You probably won’t need that last bit though, as the Flash Mate itself includes a three inch cable “stub” that plugs directly into your USB port AND tucks into the side of the Flash Mate when it isn’t needed, providing ultimate portability. There’s no software installation at all, just plug it in and go. My Win XP Pro ThinkPad recognized the extra drives immediately. Even better, the Flash Mate comes with 16MB of internal memory, which means that it provides just a little bit of extra space that you can literally fit in your pocket that is just perfect for transferring a few files back and forth, or to provide extra peace of mind as a backup for some of your most critical data files.
The Flash Mate can read Compact Flash, Secure Digital, and Smart Media cards— which covers the vast majority of expansion cards available today. The Memory Stick is noticeably absent, but if you aren’t running several Sony products you won’t miss that one at all. I was very impressed with the speed of the Flash Mate and its extreme portability. It’s a little pricey at $69.95, but at the same time it did enable me to get rid of three different card readers that were cluttering up my desk and gave me a little bit of portable data storage to boot. You can get it for yourself at the ScribblePDA web site.
PocketGoddess rating for Flash Mate: 
