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Rating: 
Summary: Best thing since sliced bread
Review: I had a Zip drive melt down, went to the SanDisk mini cruzer 256. THEN I found and bought the Pocketec. What a difference - it's fast, easy to find yet small enough to take anywhere and so far reliable. So now what am I going to do with my Zip drive and all those disks? Buy this little gadget and you'll not regret it. I love mine!
Rating: 
Summary: What's in YOUR Pockey?
Review: Once upon a time, you could buy a 100MB Iomega Zip drive that hooked up to your computer's parallel port AND required an electrical outlet for power. Today, about the same money gets you a Pockey DataStor USB 2.0 20GB portable hard drive that transfers data and draws power over a single USB cable. My, how times have changed. Right out of the box, the Pockey is the nearly-perfect portable storage device for computer users on the go. Slightly larger than a tape cassette case, the Pockey can safely travel in your notebook computer's case. It's engineered to withstand the same shocks and jolts your PC might encounter in transit but in operation it deserves the same tender loving care you lavish on your computer. While there are a few products offering a lower cost-per-gigabyte, those savings are eaten up in convenience (having to find an outlet for the power supply) and overall portability (another carrying case to lug around). The Pockey packs away a whopping 20 Gigabytes of data, more than plenty for anyone writing AND illustrating The Great American Novel, the cover flap copy, the screenplay and a few trailers for the movie. If you're more inclined to multimedia and have a hankering for more storage, Pocketec offers Pockey USB drives all the way up to 60GB. WHAT?! You need even MORE than that when you're at home or at the office? Install Pocketec's USB 2.0 PCI Card in your tower or desktop PC and you'll have 4 blazingly fast USB 2.0 ports. Plug in 4 60GB Pockey drives and if you STILL don't have enough room, well, what you're doing with your computer probably ain't legal. Once you install the software (provided on a funky three-inch CD-ROM) on the computers where you need to use the Pockey, you're ready to go. Many traveling salespeople, knowing that their clients already have PC-equipped multimedia conference rooms with internet access, bring along just a Pockey with their entire presentations. Unlike some other removable drives, the Pockey doesn't steal your CD-ROM's drive letter and push it to the bottom of the list. Instead, it politely takes the next available unused drive letter. It doesn't matter if you power up the Pockey first or plug it in after the computer has already booted up. If your computers have USB 1.1 ports, the transfer speed is just a tad faster than a parallel port Zip drive, adequate for office documents and most graphics. With Pocketec's USB 2.0 PCI Card, the transfer rate increases to a screaming 480 megabytes per second, well within shouting distance of FireWire but without fears of not finding a FireWire port on the next computer where you need to use your Pockey. On the negative side, the Pockey drive lacks a read/write indicator. A single bright green LED power indicator sits next to the USB port. It's meant to get your attention because the Pockey must be software disabled in your computer and switched off before being moved. The 3-inch software CD-ROM won't fit into slot-loading computers like certain Macintosh products, so Pocketec is gambling just a little that every slot-loading computer has internet access. Aside from those 2 minor quibbles, the Pocketec Pockey USB 2.0 20GB portable hard drive offers the best combination of price, portability and compatibility.
Rating:
Summary: Made in Thailand
Review: Pros: Compact size with a large storage
Cons: Power cable is very awkward to use for laptop computer
The Bottom Line: Yes, buy a pocket-sized HDD. It's a smart choice. Buy either Pockey or Storix. If you buy a zip drive, you'll regret it.
Recommended: Yes I just bought this product. First thing I noticed on the cover box was "Assembled in USA (Not Made in USA)." According to their website, it says "Made in USA," but on the back (bottom) of this product, it clearly says "Made in Thailand." Not that this is a big matter, but I felt cheated from the very beginning. Installation was easy, but its manual did not show any pictures, so I had no idea which was the USB cable and which was the power cable. Another problem was that the power cable has a very awkward design (T-shaped), so I could not connect the USB jack and the other jack (O-shaped) together without bending them almost to the point of breaking it. I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop which has USB and O-shaped port located right next to each other. I transferred 1.6MB of my mp3 files from HDD to Pockey. It took me about an hour through USB 1.1 port. When I checked the capacity of my pockey, it showed only 18.xxGB (Not 20GB). Another thing I noticed was that the pockey gets very hot. After one hour, it was almost too hot to touch with a bare hand. But if I have to choose, I would still buy the one encased in metal box. It looks much better. But the metal case can be made slicker in design. But overall, I still like this pocket hard disk drive. It's a much better idea to buy this product than to buy a ridiculously high-priced ZIP drive or expensive IBM Microdisk which holds only 1GB. Other portable external HDD's are available, but the size is too big to carry. Smaller ones are more expensive and still a lot bigger than pocket-type HDD. As far as I know, there are 3 pocket-sized hard drives on the market. Their names are Pockey, Storix, and Archos. Storix is almost identical to Pockey. Not only the size and design, but also the capabilities. I wonder whether they are made by the same company or exact clone products with just different marketing names. Archos MiniHD 6GB looks very cute, but 20GB one looks very unattractive (it looks a little bulkier and clumsy-looking). A lot of web vendors sell Archos MiniHD 20GB product but put a photo of 6GB model. So be aware. A lot of people just don't know this pocket HDD exist. They think ZIP drive is the only alternative to floppy disk. Once you have this product, you'll never want to go back to floppy or ZIP drive.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Add On
Review: This is one of the easiest add ons to use, Simply plug it in and carry all of the data you could possibly nedd around with you.
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