Monster Digital USB 3.0 Drive
- USB 3.0 is 1.0 better than USB 2.0
- Black is the obvious choice, so Pink gets a discount
- Choose from 32GB or 64GB: obviously, the 64GB one costs more
- But the 32GB one does have a Micro USB plug for smartphone data transfers, so it’s got that going for it, which is nice
- Model: USBOM-0032, USBCL-0064
Never under-estimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.
So goes an old, deep-geek aphorism from the earliest days of the proto-Internet primordial stew. Legend has it that someone dissatisfied with the available modem speeds said he could transfer data cheaper, faster, and more reliably with a station wagon and a crate of tapes.
Data speeds have gotten faster since then, sure. But file sizes have gotten bigger, too. Nobody in the '80s would have dreamed of sending raw digital video, or databases of billions of credit card numbers, electronically. So that station wagon full of tapes - or, these days, an SUV full of USB drives - still looks pretty good.
Anybody who has ever put a file on a thumb drive and walked it over to a co-worker’s desk will understand that advantages of “Sneakernet”. All the pain-in-the-ass questions of networked file transfer - is it transferring? why is it taking so long? why won’t it transfer? where did it go? why isn’t it showing up? WHAT THE FUCK IS IT DOING? - dissolve away when you just put the file on something you can physically hand or send to its intended recipient.
Amazon gets it. They now offer their big data clients a service called Snowball where they physically send you a briefcase full of hard drives. You put your files on it and send it back so they can upload it all. If one of the galaxy’s biggest server and file-storage providers thinks this makes sense, we’re not inclined to argue.
Judging by how surprisingly well these sold last time, you guys get it, too. So we waded into the underbrush of the marketplace and flushed out some new ones for another go-round. No matter how broad the band gets, no matter how ubiquitous the cloud, it seems there will always be a need for little things we can just plug in, put the damn files onto, and hand off. And that’s a need we’ll never again underestimate.