5. Buffalo Ultra High Speed Flash Drive 4 GB

By: Ed Tittel

These days, a Flash drive isn't just a helpful and portable storage medium or occasional fashion accessory. Thanks to Windows ReadyBoost in the new Vista operating system, a suitable Flash drive can even help to kick your notebook or desktop PC's performance up a notch or two. Simply plug the Flash drive in, tell Vista it can use up to 4 GB of the drive's available space to boost performance, and watch your system run somewhat faster as a happy result.

The Buffalo Ultra High Speed USB Flash Drive comes in sizes ranging from 256 MB all the way up to 4 GB - which, not coincidentally, is the largest chunk of Flash RAM that Windows Readyboost will permits users to put to work to speed up their systems. In fact, all the members of the Ultra High Speed family from Buffalo feature Single Level Cell (SLC) Flash RAM chips that access two modules simultaneous when reading or writing to the device, thereby doubling transfer rates while they're busily at work. The winning result is a Flash drive that dads and grads can use for all kinds of data storage, and one that also shines at helping to squeeze the best performance out of a Windows Vista computer.

This Buffalo Flash RAM unit looks pretty plain but runs like a speed demon

The detachable cap for this device is easy to snap onto the bottom of the device (where the memory chips live) to prevent the cap from going astray. Owners can also download the company's SecureLockWare software from the Buffalo Web site at no charge, to securely encrypt the drive's contents while remaining able to read and write to it themselves with ease.

While we couldn't find this Flash drive discounted anywhere, that's probably because the vendor's own price of $53.25 is simply unbeatable. This is a fabulous deal for any fast 4 GB Flash drive, but for a ReadyBoost-capable device, it's a real steal. To learn more about this speed-happy gizmo visit the Buffalo product page.