Not all flash drives are created equal

Computex 2008 in Taipei just ended last week amid great fanfare, though CommunicAsia2008 is poised take up the slack in just a few days time. An annual affair in Singapore, CommunicAsia is an enterprise and communications-technology centric exhibition that promises to be loads of fun.

I will be there myself, and I promise to bring you some nuggets in TechWatch next week. In the meantime, we find ourselves in the eye of the storm, so to speak, of product announcements and cutting-edge demo hardware.

Anyway, this week brought news of Microsoft persecuting "career" pirates in Federal courts around the States. Now, I do not advocate piracy in any form, though I must admit I find it surprising that the company is claiming $8 billion worth of its software was counterfeited last year alone. You would have imagined it would be lower, what with the pervasiveness of Windows Genuine Advantage.

Having worked for a year for a leading computer peripherals maker, and having traveled extensively to Taiwan, Hong Kong and China in the course of my work, I can say that I am relatively privy to the workings of the electronics manufacturing industry. Still, it was interesting to read about the varying grades of memory that could be in your humble USB flash drives.

Have you seen an incredibly cheap USB flash drive on sale? Well, I would be cautious if I intended to use it to hold anything important at all. - Paul