Gee, I wish this was smaller, is probably not what comes to mind when you look at an USB stick. I mean, the stick is already pocket-sized, and you may have spent precious time searching for it in an overflowing desk drawer, like I have. Nonetheless, Verbatim has released the puny USB stick that’s smaller than a dime. It’s called the Store ‘n’ Stay, and if smaller means better to you, you can get up to 16 GB of extra storage on the thing.

The selling feature of the USB is that since it’s so tiny, you can just leave it in your laptop’s USB port without worrying about snapping it off.  It’s primary use though, is those USB ports showing up on car stereos.  Rather than having an ugly bulky USB stick sticking out of your dash, this tiny little thing will offer you stealth expansion.  There’s also no light on it, so the blinking may or may not get on your nerves sometimes, with this, it’s not a problem.  Aside from that, the Store ‘n’ Stay is obviously tiny and will be the easiest of any USB stick to lose, that’s the down side. The up side is that it works about as well as you would expect any USB stick to work, and it’s Verbatim.

You can get the Store ‘n’ Stay USB drive in 4 GB ($20), 8 GB ($30), and 16 GB ($60). The USB stick, or perhaps nub, is compatible with Windows 7 and Vista, Mac OS 9.x or higher and Linux kernel 2.6x and higher. You can get 5200 photos and 4000 songs on the 16 GB. As long as you don’t lose it.

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Way before I got into the world of smartphones (since they didn’t even exist at the time), I had a Palm Pilot PDA. I thought it was God’s gift to humankind. I could keep track of my schedule, take all kinds of notes, and have my entire contact list in the palm of my hand. It was also useful for writing my university papers. I didn’t have a laptop at the time, but I could whip out my fold-up keyboard, connect it to the PDA, open up a basic text editor and have at ‘er. The portability and versatility were great. And now, many many years later, we somehow find ourselves back at the same scenario with the newly announced Verbatim Mobile Keyboard.

Sure, it does Bluetooth instead of a physical connection and it’s for the iPad/iPhone rather than a Palm Pilot, but it’s still a fold-up QWERTY keyboard aimed to help you write on a device that can be hard to write on. It’s amazing how regardless of the leaps and bounds we’ve made in technology innovation, so many aspects still stay the same. Kinda sad, really.

The Verbatim keyboard is $79.99 and can be found at Fry’s and Amazon.

[Amazon via PR]

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After a good attempt at every iteration possible USB drives tend to be just that, USB drives.  Well, leave it to the design team over at Verbatim to keep things interesting.  They’ve come out with a Clip-it line of USB drives, which basically do just that, clip on to things like a paper clip.  You can clip it to your tie, business cards, pocket protector, heck you can clip it anywhere you want.  The clip is so clipping cute it has won a red dot Design Award for ingenuity.  Priced from €8.99 ($12) for a 2GB and €11.49 ($15) for the 4GB clip, it will come in seven colors.

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In this latter implementation, you want to maintain a certain air of professionalism and that’s why burning your material onto a generic disc may not be the best of ideas. The point is that the distributed disc has your company branding and not that of TDK, Fujifilm, or Memorex. That’s why having personalized labels can be so important, not to mention the personalization that the average consumer can enjoy as well. Sharing family photos and movies this way can be great.

One possible solution that you may want to consider is the Verbatim AquaAce family of discs. More specifically, we’ll be taking a closer look at the Verbatim AquaAce Glossy White Inkjet-printable DVD-Rs. These writable discs can be used with compatible inkjet printers for disc printing.

The Deal with AquaAce Technology

This family of discs makes use of Verbatim’s patented AquaAce glossy white disc coating. The glossy white surface has an appearance not unlike the glossy white photo paper that you may find in a variety of different stores for printing your favorite pictures.

The idea here is twofold. First, it allows for a very professional glossy appearance that can be printed on directly using compatible inkjet disc printers from companies like Primera, Microboards, Epson, Microtech, HP, and so on. There is no Verbatim branding on the discs themselves, so you really can make them your own.

It’s also notable that this photo-quality printing surface is resistant to smudges and bleed due to water and humidity. I normally associate water-resistance with matte finishes, but I found that the glossy surface of these Verbatim AquaAce discs was smudge resistant right away. No more messy fingers.

And the Burning Speed and Quality?

I was provided with a sample of standard DVD-R discs with just 4.7GB of storage. These are not dual-layer discs. They are also rated at just 8x speed and they are single-write discs (not -RW). With the 8x speed, you can fill the disc to capacity in less than 10 minutes.

In terms of reliability, the first disc that I used on my Dell laptop failed to finish. It’s hard to determine whether this is the fault of the software, the DVD burner, or the disc itself. The burning process looked like it finished, filling it with 4GB of photos as a data disc, but the disc showed up as empty when I tried to read it later on.

Repeating the process with a second disc resulted in absolutely no errors and no problems. As mentioned, the initial problem may be due to my computer or it could have been a faulty disc. I can’t say for sure.

Conclusion

Printable DVD-R media isn’t exactly the most exciting thing in the world, but if you have the right printer, these discs are much more convenient that the printing label solutions that you may find elsewhere.

The glossy white surface really is as good as the glossy print paper that photographers use and the high-sheen surface really does give a sense of professionalism. The smudge-resistant surface is quite nice. A 50-disc spindle sells for about $35.

Overall Rating: 7.5/10

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You may know Verbatim better for its memory products, but the company also produces a range of computer accessories as well. Joining the lineup is the Verbatim Easy Rise Notebook Mouse family. There are three members to this family and they all take on the same unique feature.

When it’s time to stow them away in your bag, then can drop down into a relatively flat and slim profile. When it’s time to take them to use, you can actually adjust the height of the rear portion to make for a more comfortable mousing experience. That’s certainly original.

There are three versions of this notebook mouse. There’s the Easy Riser Notebook Optical Mouse with a retractable wired USB connection ($19.99), the Easy Riser Bluetooth Notebook Laser Mouse ($39.99), and the Easy Riser Wireless Laser Mouse with Nano Receiver ($34.99).

Look for all three Easy Riser Mice to launch this October through the usual channels.

Source: Verbatim

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