SanDisk Cruzer Titanium 2GB Review

Free wi-fi is cool, but sometimes you have to resort to an Internet Café. That’s nice as well, if you really need it, but what I miss is having the programs that I normally use installed on the computer. U3 Flash Drives take care of that issue by having the U3 Platform pre-installed on the flash drive, along with any of your personal favorites that have U3 versions.

Enter the Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 2GB flash drive (my thanks to Sandisk for the unit). Let me tell you, usually when I use a flash drive it’s a generic SD card stuck into my old trusty Lexar Jumpdrive Trio. But that’s not exactly an elegant solution, and the Jumpdrive, being fairly old, is pretty clunky and does not fit well into vertically mounted USB ports (if you have something else plugged into the other port, the Trio won’t fit).

What do you get in the package? You get:

• one of those incredibly hard plastic packages to open
• the drive
• a lanyard
• a belt clip
• a voucher for one month of Skype service

The dimensions of the drive are 2.28″ x 0.75″ x 0.28″. Unlike the Trio, it has no problem fitting into a USB port with something else mounted. Also, unlike some drives, it doesn’t have a cap, but a connector that’s retractable and moved via a slider. The slider requires a reasonable amount of force to move, so it’s not going to accidentally move. The slider also doubles as an activity LED, which glows blue when the device is plugged in and active and blinks with activity.

The belt clip is nice, but it’s so tight, I couldn’t put it on a belt. At least not easily. On the other hand, it certainly won’t fall off either.

More info about U3 drives in general can be found here. When you start up a U3 drive, the launchpad will start up.

Programs included on the drive are:

• Signup Shield – a password manager
• Avast! Antivirus
• Skype
• CruzerSync (for Outlook)

In the image you can see I also installed RoboForm2Go. More on this later.

Nicely, CruzerSync detected there was a new version when I launched it and asked to update the flash drive.

The programs are OK, especially Signup Shield, but I didn’t use any of them except Avast! I’m familiar with Avast! from it’s free PC AV solution, and it’s nice to go into a situation with an unknown PC and be safe. On the other hand, it takes a lot longer to update the Avast! program on the U3 drive than on a PC. Finally, unlike the PC solution, it’s not free, and apparently after two months the AV will stop updating.

As I said, I didn’t use Signup Shield, as I use Roboform on my home PCs, and thus I also used RoboForm2Go for U3 … but their uses are the same. I hadn’t used RoboForm2Go for U3 before, and I especially liked the new integration into the browser … rather than being limited to a toolbar at the bottom of the screen, which is what the non-U3 protable version does, it actually integrates the normal Roboform toolbar at the top of the browser window. Much nicer. (BTW, if you don’t already know, you can set, through the U3 Launcher, each program to start … or not start … immediately when the drive is inserted.

Claimed R/W speeds:

Read transfer speed: 15MB/s
Write transfer speed: 9MB/s

I actually got a write transfer speed of 10.8MB/s and a read speed of 14.8MB/s, using a 256MB file. Very nice, but naturally, your mileage will vary.

I’m not going to run through all the U3 programs, but one thing that’s nice about the U3 platform is that there is plenty of free (and not free) software out there. You can get to it through the launcher itself, though a menu option under the “Add Programs” menu item … it’’s called U3 Download Central, but you can also find it on the web. And of course your favorite search engine will lead you to other such programs.

Of course, I have to rant about something, and that would be the manual. Like most manuals nowadays, not just tech stuff, the manual leaves a lot to be desired. What I mean by that is that usually they skip some important stuff. Like how to move the slider, for example. I mean, I figured it out, but still. Reminds me of the coffeemaker I just bought. They combined the manual for the coffeemaker with a different submodel so I had to figure out that yes, the maker did have a strength selector and that I could choose the strength of the coffee.

Pricing for this product? For a 2GB version, the suggested retail price is $109.99. A 1GB version is $69.99. Naturally, you can find it for a lot cheaper if you try.

What’s my conclusion? This drive is fast, purportedly indestructable, small, light … and if I can ever get it on my belt, would actually stay put, as opposed to a lot of other stuff I carry. The U3 platform and the generous 2GB of space means you can carry around just about everything you need to “personalize” any PC for your use. I’d highly recommend this product.