Probably just about any football (or soccer) fan out there knows by now that Spain won the Euro 2008 Championship, thus proving to be the best team on the old continent.
As expected, this event, one of the most important around the world, has brought about a whole range of related products, from various souvenirs to all sorts of electronic products. And this is exactly what we’re going talk about as follows, namely Kingston’s "DataTraveler Vienna" USB Flash drive, a device that provides users with something a lot more important than GB of storage space. It comes packed with football-related content, which every football-avid user can enjoy just about anytime they want (even after formatting the flash drive). But we’ll go into "deeper" details regarding this subject a bit later. For now, let’s see just what this thing looks like. Design Design-wise, the device from Kingston is quite clearly identical to the company’s DataTraveler Style model (actually, the whole Vienna is a Style model dressed up for football, Mr. Mihai Marcu, Kingston’s manager for Romania, informed us). So, what we’re dealing with here is a small (59.7mm x 22.3mm x 9.5mm) and lightweight product that, much in the same way as most other flash drives out there, will take up a very small amount of space around the users’ desk/bag/computer case/etc.
Plus, it’s all "dressed in black", which further enhances its slim and sleek look, while also granting it a more elegant aspect. And since we’re dealing with a retractable model (the USB connector is either pushed out or retracted via a button placed on the lateral side of the device), the overall level of safety is increased, as there are very little chances of the aforementioned connector getting damaged during transport. Moreover, much in the same way as the style model, it does provide certain very interesting customization options, in the form of various skins. To be honest, I’ll have to say that the idea of being able to change (at least to some extent) the way your portable storage solution looks like is quite an interesting one. However, the way this "customization" process is carried out has a negative issue, which we’ll detail as follows.
, the drive features a sort of large groove on the front side, protected by a plastic cap. The skins (which are actually nothing other than various drawings and designs that users can download and print-out for themselves) are inserted in this groove and then covered by the transparent plastic cap. Nevertheless, although the skins are quite attractive, the plastic cap itself is the cheapest looking component of the whole drive. Of course, I’m pretty sure that this technical solution had the best price/aesthetics/usability ratio, but the fact remains that the very elegant and sleek look of the drive from Kingston is somewhat marred by this piece of plastic. Last (but certainly not least), it’s important to mention that the sales package of the drive also includes a small lanyard, which can be used very conveniently in order to attach the portable storage solution to a backpack, purse, belt of whatever else item you might carry around with you on a daily basis. ContentYou might be wondering why I’ve decided to talk about the content first, leaving the technical capabilities of the drive at the end. Well, the answer is quite simple: this is something to hold on to even after the Euro 2008 has finished, a movie that details every participant’s road to the championships, what pretty much every team out there has had to go through in order to get a "ticket" for either Austria, Switzerland, or, in the case of Germany and Spain, Vienna itself. While I won’t go into any more details regarding the movie itself (for obvious copyright reasons, of course), I can tell you that its quality is absolutely superb. We’ve watched this thing on a Windows machine, a computer running the Linux OS and even an iMac, and the results were staggering in each and every case.
However, Windows users do have an advantage over the people working on either Linux or Mac systems and that’s because the movie is accompanied by specialized software, which, unfortunately, only runs under Windows and that will require you to have at least 2 GB of storage space on your C: drive. What this application does is install the FLV movie viewer (the people from Kingston have probably chosen this particular program for its capabilities of running on just about every type of platform there is) and then adds audio subtitles in several European languages (the version we’ve had a chance to test had subtitles for English, Dutch, Polish, Czech, Romanian, Swedish and Croatian, which is a rather strange mixture, at least geographically speaking). This football-related content is practically the "gimmick", the main selling point of the drive from Kingston. And that’s because most users who will go out and purchase this thing won’t do so for the looks, the performance or the storage space, but rather for the possibility of having a little piece of Euro 2008 to hold on to for the future. Technical features and performanceNow that we’ve talked about the Kingston DataTraveler Vienna’s content and external design, it’s about time to move to some technical stuff, namely the capabilities provided by the drive itself. First and foremost, it’s important to mention the fact that the drive from Kingston offers a total storage space of 2 GB, which is among the most popular sizes for most users nowadays. Of course, some might say that that’s not nearly enough space to carry around a whole DVD image, for example, but that’s not the point with the Vienna.
The data transfer speed is a very important issue in the case of any device of this type, so a speed test was absolutely mandatory. For the tests, we’ve used the following applications:
SiSoftware Sandra Lite,
HD Tune and Crystal DiskMark. While the Kingston DataTraveler Vienna behaved quite well as far as the sequential reading speed was concerned (around 19.7 MB/s in each test software app), the writing speed was… well, modest, achieving a maximum of around 5.91 MB/s. However, it’s also interesting to note that the transfer speed is greatly improved when copying smaller files to the drive, which means that various documents, photos, etc. will be written a lot faster to the device.
On the other hand, we’ve also used the SiSoftware Sandra Lite to compare the Kingston DataTraveler Vienna against some other flash drives, coming either from Kingston or some of its competitors. Unfortunately, the results in this area weren’t the best, either, although they did provide a bit of a surprise, since the Kingston DataTraveler Viena seems to be a lot more resistant to repeated read/write operations than some of its other counterparts. ConclusionsThe GoodBy far, the best thing about the Kingston DataTraveler Vienna is the included football content. Practically, it’s like having a small chunk of football history at your disposal wherever and whenever you might want it. The storage space is not all that bad either (2 GB is quite OK for most of the average users’ needs) and you can also rest assured that the data will be kept safe at all times, given the fact that you can very easily hide the USB connector (and attached USB module) within the main body of the drive by simply pressing the sliding button. Moreover, users are offered quite a wide range of customization options, which means that they’ll be able to change the "face" of their product whenever they feel like it. The Bad The data transfer speed (more precisely, the writing speed) is by far the most serious negative feature of the drive from Kingston. After all, the speed at which a user transfers files is a very important issue, especially when the respective person is on the run. Another minus is represented by the plastic cap used for "installing" the various skins onto the drive. Overall impressions The Kingston DataTraveler Vienna is a fairly OK flash drive, but it’s most likely to find fans among those people really passionate by football. As you’ve been able to see within this review, it’s the content, not necessarily the storage space or the transfer speeds that will draw the customers’ attention to this particular device. However, as mentioned earlier, if you really have something that will remind you of Euro 2008 for the rest of your life, then this is most likely just the thing to get. Sales package Inside the sales package, you’ll find the following items: - The Kingston DataTraveler Vienna- Lanyard - Printed paper sheet with sample skins
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